Page Hierarchy Question
-
I understand the basic concept of page hierarchy, i.e. parent and child pages.
My question is: Should the home page be the parent of all 2nd-level pages? Can/should there only be one top-level page, the home page?
In other words, is this:
site.com/homesite.com/home/products site.com/home/products/widgetsite.com/home/aboutsite.com/home/contactbetter than this:site.com/homesite.com/products site.com/products/widgetsite.com/aboutsite.com/contactThanks for your opinion!
-
Very good point Kris
-
All excellent answers. my only tip, make sure your URLs are short, tight, and clean!
-
I believe that the folders that your pages are placed in are less important than the linkage of your website.
Folders are the structure used to organize files on a server.
Linkage is how a website's structure is presented to the visitor and to Google. Linkage includes your persistent navigation, breadcrumbs, and the in-content links that you are publishing to visitors. It can also include link inputs from other websites. This is the structure that Google uses to discover how linkjuice and visitors flow through your website. Then they will use that information to decide which pages and parts of your website are really important.
Files in the same folder can have dramatic differences in importance on the basis of linkvalue, visitor useage, and traffic entry. They can also have very different power inputs produced by links into them from other websites. Files deep in folder structures can have higher PA than your homepage, files deep in your folder structure of your website can get more traffic than your homepage.
It is not unusual for a website to have third-level (and deeper) pages that get 10x as much traffic as the homepage. These are pages that have gained visibility in high volume SERPs or have gained visibility across an enormous number of queries.
Its possible that 90% of visitors never see the homepage. Instead they land on a deep page and are routed through the site by effective navigation, breadcrumbs, on-site search and in-content links.
Wikipedia is an example of a website where folder structure is meaningless and enormous traffic and linkvalue flows through in-content links. Amazon is a site where folder structure is meaningless and enormous traffic and linkvalue flows through dynamic persistent navigation, dynamic breadcrumbs, product recommendations and powerful on-site search.
Consider how your site can best serve the visitor. Decide how you can modify that to make the site best-serve your business goals. There is where you should spend significant thought and time.
-
ANSWER Yes, your home page will be the parent of all 2nd-level pages and any other page no matter the level
Your site needs a certain structure. Otherwise, it’ll just be a collection of pages and blog posts. Your users need the structure to navigate through your site, to click from one page to the other. And Google uses the structure of your site in order to determine what content is important and what content is less important
Structuring your website is crucial for both usability and findability. A lot of sites lack a decent structure to guide visitors to the product they’re looking for. Apart from that, having a clear site structure leads to better understanding of your site by Google
The structure of your site should be like a pyramid. On the top of the pyramid is your homepage, and underneath the homepage a number of category pages. For larger sites, you should make subcategories or custom taxonomies (more on that later). Within the categories and subcategories, you will have a number of blog posts, pages or product pages.
If you’ve not yet divided the blog posts or product pages on your site into a number of categories, you should definitely do so Make sure to add these categories to the main menu of your site.
Your linking structure is of great importance. Each page in the top of a pyramid should link to its subpages. And vice versa, all the subpages should link back to the pages on top of the pyramid.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Which Is More Important? Building a web page for customer reviews or a careers page?
Hello, I am wondering which would be more important to have on a website a customer review page or a careers page? And as far an SEO advantage which is more important and why?
On-Page Optimization | | Nicks1230 -
Page title contents
In my page title, I have my product name. Is it beneficial to also include another keyword like: Buy wedding dress online Australia: e..g. (page title) amelie wedding dress | buy wedding dress online Australia. Or is it better just using: Amelie wedding dress
On-Page Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
What to do with multiple forms and thank you pages
Hi Everyone, I'm wondering what to do with form and thank you pages. I asked a question a long time ago about the contact page as noindex and was told by people that its better to leave it and write content for it and thats what we did. Now I have a client that does self storage and they have 4 locations and each location has a reservation page with a basic form but no content. Each page also redirects to a thank you page with tracking codes. There's a total of 6 "thank you" pages with different codes (this was done by yellow book). 4 "reserve your storage pages", 2 pages to pay for storage with iframes to 3rd party payment portals. I was told to noindex these pages but I'm not sure so I'm asking here. I was also told to nofollow and remove them from sitemaps. Thanks Aron
On-Page Optimization | | aronwp0 -
On-page SEO optimization
hi there! Is it possible not to be in the first 20 or 30 positions in the SERPs after executing onpage SEO actions (keyword optimization, metatags, ....) even for keywords for which there's not "too much" competition? Is there a way of visualize the pages indexed by the google bot? (the pages especifically, not the number) in order to discard indexing problems? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr1 -
Meta Description Question
Hi, Lets say you have a 1000 pages, is it ok to generate a template meta description and flip the keywords depending on the page? For example: Red Shoes page: Buy Red Shoes at amazing prices. We have a large range of Red Shoe sizes available. Blue Shoes page: Buy Blue Shoes at amazing prices. We have a large range of Blue Shoe sizes available. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Bondara0 -
Please review page for on page SEO
I'm working on an adult dating site review blog and am hoping to build links to the category pages. It's a wordpress blog so the posts are categorised by topics. However can you tell me if there is enough content on the page for google to identify what the page is about? The problem is that the content of each category pages is pulled from the posts. What I think is needed is some static text on the page 2-300 words that use the keyword. Here's an example of a page targeting the keywords 'online dating'. http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com/category/online-dating/
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK
[editor's note -- thumbnails on site may not be appropriate for some workplaces] Will the page rank like this if there are a good amount of authorative links or does the page itself need work?0 -
I have a question about on page links or duplicate contant
Ok help me out here friends. I’m working with the warnings and errors for my site. I have two problems that relate to each other and I want to know if you had to choose what problem what would you choose. I’m running into some duplicate content and title errors because under categories for my products there are so many products that it creates more than one page and with each new page it has the same title or same content on the page. I tried to make this less in some cases by showing more products per page like 100 items and in most cases per category it will only show one page now. Now some times there’s still more than one page and also this creates too many links now on that category page. So I think I can get rid of all the to many on page links but it will make more pages and duplicate content and title tag. What would you guys do?
On-Page Optimization | | Dataken0 -
Meta Description Question
Is it ok to put your domain name in the meta description if that is the name of your company? so if my company name is BlaBla.com and I want to have a meta description like Shop for your next Widget at BlaBla.com. We have Widget in 30 colors. Free shipping for orders over $50. and I am obviosuly promoting the widget page is this ok. I am concerned that Google will not like the domain name in the meta description. After Peguin I am paranoid about my shadow.....LOL
On-Page Optimization | | freestone0