SEO - New URL structure
-
Hi,
Currently we have the following url structure for all pages, regardless of the hierarchy: domain.co.uk/page, such as domain/blog name.
Can you, please confirm the following:
1. What is the benefit of organising the pages as a hierarchy, i.e. domain/features/feature-name or domain/industries/industry-name or domain/blog/blog name etc.
2. This will create too many 301s - what is Google's tolerance of redirects? Is it worth for us changing the url structure or would you only recommend to add breadcrumbs?
Many thanks
Katarina
-
Hey all!
I am asking question in replies as i don't have free trial any more. Well, my question is about technical and off-page seo. I get confused about the both more often. Can someone please clarify the difference between the two? I am new to seo and applying my learnings to my technology blog for improving the search ranking. -
How wonderful Adam. I am currenctly working on a smaller <a href="https://cryptocasinosverige.com/">Bitcoin Casino</a> site and I hope that eventually Google will notice it. It is not easy but Moz gives great insight on how all SEO related things work.
-
I had a really working and profitable website made by qualified employees of the company https://seotwix.com/ . I liked their professionalism, efficiency and friendly attitude to clients. There was a truly impressive work - created a unique design with original findings and innovations. Adequate understanding of the needs of my company and careful attention to all my complex needs, especially in the design of the structure of the site, as well as its further promotion on the Internet.
-
Hi there! There seems to be a bit of confusion in this thread between URL structure and Information Architecture. Having more folders in a URL doesn't reduce the authority but pages with more folders in the URL tend to be deeper in the sites linking architecture, which means they tend to have less authority because they aren't as close to the surface. The difference between internal links and url format is an important one. There's a blog post here which explains in more depth.
From my perspective, here are the benefits of having pages within folders;
- There is an opportunity to put more relevant keywords in the URL without stuffing
- Easier folder-level reporting in Google Analytics, Search Console etc.
- Some increased understanding for Google of how pages hang together - there is some evidence that Google uses folder structure for ranking before it knows much about the page for example.
In terms of managing authority for pages and signals of relevance I'd be looking much more towards the internal linking to those pages. I wouldn't rely on Google intuitively understanding the topical connection between two pages unless both of those pages target that topic or have relevant links between them. So for example, say you have two pages;
If those pages are both subcategories of trinkets you could reformat them to be;
Having "trinkets" in the url might help both pages rank for "trinkets" type keywords, like "doodad trinkets" for example. However, I wouldn't rely on this change to help Google understand that widgets are related to doodads - you can handle that much more effectively with relevant internal links between /widgets and /doodads that make the relation clear.
In terms of whether there is a risk to making this change - this is essentially a migration and definitely comes with risks associated, even if all of your redirects are 1:1 and direct. It'll take time for Google to find the redirects and new pages, and as a rule of thumb, link equity isn't passed perfectly along a 301 redirect so I wouldn't expect these new pages to just inherit the strength of the old ones.
I think it comes down to weighing up whether the benefits I listed above outweigh the risk of an in-site migration. If you think the keyword targeting opportunities will make enough of a difference then great but I wouldn't rely on url structure as a way to get Google to understand your site differently - the impact of internal links is going to be a far greater factor.
-
Google's tolerance for 301 redirects is pretty high as long as you use speedy ones (implement via NginX - 'engine X', not via .htaccess lines). If the redirects are logical and they don't chain or contact with incorrect redirect types (Meta refreshes, 302s etc) then usually you're ok. Still it will take Google time to digest all the changes and you could see a small interim performance dip
Flat URL structure tends to build the 'authority' of URLs better, making them more powerful. Deeper and more nested URL structures serve 'relevance' better as they give much more context. If your domain's overall SEO authority is low to begin with, then a flatter structure may be better for now. If you have lots of SEO authority then you may be able to 'irrigate' more deeply nested URLs more effectively, thus reaping long-tail gains (so each structure has strengths and weaknesses, depending upon your current standing on the web)
Flatter structures rank better for larger terms, but only if you have the SEO authority to power them. Deeper structures rank better for longer-tail terms (but thousands of them) - again though without the right SEO authority metrics, there will be very few droplets of 'SEO juice' which end up reaching the lower-level pages
In the end most sites evolve to a point where they adopt the more deeply nested structure, but they usually suffer growing pains as they transition. In the long run it can be superior, but only for sites which can make good use of it (e.g: eCommerce web stores with categories, products, collections, product variants etc). If a site is services based it often doesn't have so much SEO authority and also - the deeper structure isn't really so relevant! A services based site will usually offer far fewer services than an eCommerce store offers products (tens vs hundreds of thousands)
A strong publisher with lots of ranking power (online magazines, newspaper digital editions) will often switch to the deeper structure for listing their content and (in the long run) see a lot of benefit from that. For smaller publications (blogs, blog or news pages on business / non-publisher sites) - it's often not worth the move
-
Hi,
Thanks for your answer. We sell B2B software.
The website is structured as global, /us, /au etc. It's just the urls appear all equal atm.
Thanks
Katarina
-
It all depends what you're selling & where you're selling it, also if your hierarchy structure allows for the inclusion of keywords including geo locations, all the better.
Somewhat dated but useful article https://moz.com/learn/seo/url
-
One additional thought to add extra complexity, adding hierarchy is fine, but try to avoid increasing page depth while doing so.
John Mueller discussed this in a few places in the past year that page depth > URL structure.
-
Thanks for your time.
Excellent! Now I'm super scared haha But I understand what you are saying and will share your advice with the team.
Many thanks.
Katarina
-
Hi
No your sweet on the redirects/301's - many sites have 95% redirects from http to https for example. So no chains and you are fine.
Well my view on above is that advice on a hierarchical structure is dangerous. Our job is to always adopt a "first do no harm" approach. We have many clients - no hierarchical structure and awesome rankings. Do we very slowly build hierarchical structures into them - yes. It makes life easier for all. But would we touch the top traffic driving pages - 100% no. It is too high a risk. So you need to do a proper evaluation of the site and what pages are ranking - getting clicks and what are not. There may be sections, a low risk that can move into a hierarchical structure - start there. But do not make a change for change sake to follow what is now good practice.
Hope that helps.
-
Hi,
Thanks for your answer.
'...if the site is ranking well under current strategy...' - I mean, we don't know as there is nothing to compare with. Recently we have been presented with an idea of creating subfolders and clearly showing the site hierarchy via urls. Apparently, it should make an instant difference and should improve our ranks. I'm really unsure if this is guaranteed.
FYI - we would never 301 one url more than just once so no chain. However, I wonder if we had 95% of all site urls redirected if this would impact us negatively.
Also - one more thing we are doing now (and we never used to have) is creating portfolio pages - very relevant pages linking from one main page to demonstrate the hierarchy further.
I'm trying to find out if adding so many 301s and putting all the effort into creating a hierarchy via additional articles, pages, breadcrumbs etc would definitely result in a positive outcome.
Thanks
Katarina
-
Hi
Not clear 100% on the question. Firstly if the site is ranking well under current strategy then recommend where appropriate that continues. It sounds like every page hangs straight off the root domain? However, if the opportunity presents to build out a hierarchical structure then we would recommend same.
The benefit of a hierarchical structure is it builds out topical authority or makes it easier for search engines to interpret the site. All google has done is roll the old dewy library system into the site maps. By analogy the more books you have hanging off the History section (parent subfolder) the better the site should be seen in the context of providing answers to history. Then it comes down to the quality of pages hanging off the subfolder and how much shared.
So in short to answer your question a hierarchical structure makes your site easier for Google to understand and builds out topical authority which long term is future proofing against voice search.
Onto the second part of the question, there is no problems with 301's per se as long as it is one hop.. so to redirect a page more than 3 times is a big negative as Google often does not crawl those pages. Recommended practice to change the redirects from page 1 > page 4 and page 2 > page 4, page 3 > 4, etc so all old redirects point in one hop to the final destination page.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Canonical Url Structure Vs. Google Search View
I recently set up a new site and set the "preferred" domain in Google Webmasters to show URLs WITHOUT the WWW for google search purposes. In the confirmation email from google, this confused me: "This setting defines which host - www or not - should be considered the canonical host when indexing your site." In the website, we have cononical URLS at the top of every page in the header, but still have the WWW in those. Any issues with that?
Technical SEO | | vikasnwu0 -
URL redirect question
Hi all, Just wondering whether anybody has experience of CMSs that do a double redirect and what affect that has on rankings. here's the example /page.htm is 301 redirected to /page.html which is 301 redirected to /page As Google has stated that 301 redirects pass on benefits to the new page, would a double redirect do the same? Looking forward to hearing your views.
Technical SEO | | A_Q0 -
OSE says URL redirects to URL with trailing slash but it doesn't.
Site is www.example.com/folder/us and OSE says this URL redirects to www.example.com/folder/us/, but it does not. When I look at the OSE report for the latter version with the "/" it says "No Data Available For This URL". Why would that be? The original URL is www.example.com and it redirects to www.example.com/folder/us. Is this anything I need to worry about? I thought that the trailing / doesn't really mean much anymore but nonetheless, why does it think it redirects there?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
Best URL-structure for ecommerce store?
What structure will recommend to the product pages? Lets make an example with the keyword "Luxim FZ200" With category in url:
Technical SEO | | gojesper
www.myelectronicshop.com/digital-cameras/luxim-FZ200.html With /product prefix:
www.myelectronicshop.com/product/luxim-FZ200.html Without category in url:
www.myelectronicshop.com/luxim-FZ200.html I have read in a blog post that Paddy Moogan recommend /lluxim-FZ200.html - i think i prefer this version too. But I can see that many of the bigger ecommerce stores are using a /product prefix before the product name. What is the reason for this? and what is best practice?0 -
Redirection Impact on SEO
Need help urgently. There is the situation [This is how is it working now]: 1. Have a global landing page [say when user types in www.mysite.com - takes user to the global landing page: [www.mysite.com/global/en.html]](http://www.mysite.com/global/en.html] ) 2. Users from this landing page can select a country on his/her choice and get redirected say: [www.mysite.com/us/en.html] Would like to change the functionality as below: 1. When user types in www.mysite.com 1a. Would find the location of the request based on GEO IP and if the request is coming from North America region then would redirect the users to: www.mysite.com/us/en.html 1b. If the request is from any other location/region then it would continue to work as it is currently working: take the user to the global landing page: www.mysite.com/global/en.html Would this change have any negative impact or not found by search engines from SEO perspective? If it does then what are the impacts and if does not then why not. If it does then what is the best possible way to address this request. Appriciate your help. Thanks, Koushik Roy
Technical SEO | | KoushikRoy0 -
Friendly URLs
Hi, I have an important news site and I am trying to implement user friendly URLs. Now, when you click a news in the homepage, it goes to a redirect.php page and then goes to a friendly url. the question is, It is better to have the friendly URL in the first link or it is the same for the robot having this in the finally url? Thanks
Technical SEO | | informatica8100 -
How can I redirect old URLs to new ones?
We are trying to optimize our website for search engines and one of the things we have noticed that needs to be changed are the URLs. I know how to modify the URLs but have no idea how I can get the old redirected to the new ones using 301. We have some pages ranking pretty high on Google and we can't loose this traffic. Our website is hosted on Plesk and it was coded using Cold Fusion. I do have access to the .htaccess file. Any help would be highly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | personalproducts0 -
URL Structure Question
Hey folks, I have a weird problem and currently no idea how to fix it. We have a lot of pages showing up as duplicates although they are the same page, the only difference is the url structure. They seem to show up like: http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page What would I need to do to force the URLs into one format or the other to avoid having that one page counting as two? The same issue pops up with upper and lower case: http://www.example.com/Page and http://www.example.com/page Is there any solution to this or would I need to forward them with 301s or similar? Thanks, Mike
Technical SEO | | Malarowski0