Large event site - how should I structure my URLs?
-
Hi guys,
I'm working on a new website which is consolidating a number of existing event sites into one. The existing sites use a variety of URL structures:
www.eventsite1.com/events/event-name
www.eventsite2.com/festival-program/event-name
This inconsistency has led to issues with tracking category usage properly in analytics - for instance, with eventsite3.com, events fall within categories (www.eventsite3.com/category-name) but as soon as you drill into an event detail page (www.eventsite3.com/event-name) from the category page, the category is lost to analytics. This is compounded when one event lives within multiple categories, as I can't figure out which category is the most effective for a particular event.
I've seen other event sites establish a canonical URL for a primary category, display it in the URL (i.e. www.eventsite4.com/primary-category/event-name) yet still let that event get hit via the secondary categories (www.eventsite4.com/secondary-category/event-name). This way, the categories get passed to analytics without any duplicate content issues (i.e. via the setting of canonicals)
Basically, I want to make sure that whatever instruction I give to the devs for the new site re: URL structure is correct from an SEO perspective and analytics perspective. Do I even need to worry about having the category in the URL?
Can someone please help me with this?
Hope this makes sense
Cheers
-
Hi Karl,
I can't give you a definitive answer on this as it's based on more data, but I think you need to keep in mind that you need an can separate on how your URL structure actually looks and the data you can save in Google Analytics. For example it's really easy to send custom pageviews data to Google Analytics. Also if you try to prefer having the category not in the URL it's still possible to send them to Google Analytics via either a custom pageview of custom dimension. So I would go for the best SEO option in your opinion and also the best option in Google Analytics so you get the best of both.
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
-
Longterm wordpress blog not providing seo benefit to main site - help needed please
Hi I have a bigcommerce ecommerce store, with a Wordpress blog on a subdomain. The store and blog have been active for four years, the blog is regularly updated with original content, has many links to the store, is promoted regularly via my brand's social media channels and mailing list, and has the simplest SEO basics covered via a Yoast SEO plugin. But the store sees very little, if any, SEO benefit from the blog. My question is: based on this information, and the details below, is there an issue with the connection between the blog and main site in SEO terms? And if there is, how can I start fixing it? Further info: 1 In my Moz dashboard for the store site, the blog does not show at all as providing any inbound links or linking domains 2 Google Analytics also shows zero referral traffic to the store site from the blog since April 2015 3 Moz crawl issues is flagging ‘duplicate page content issues’ for pretty much every page of the blog, and the analysis provided suggests this may be related to tags but I have only basic SEO knowledge and am fast getting out of my depth here. 4 I have today altered the settings within the Yoast plugin on the blog to ‘noindex’ for Tags, Meta Robots, based on advice I have found in this section but am already well over my head and unsure even this is correct. An agency have been running SEO for the store since 2012 but since uncovering how little they have done in this time for the money paid, I am now taking matters back into my own hands. However I am on a very steep learning curve and this one is beyond me right now - please does anyone have any suggestions where I can start looking to uncover the root issue? Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated Thanks very much and hope to hear from someone!
Reporting & Analytics | | Warren_331 -
How to create goal for Events?
Hi All, I have created event via google tag manager for my ecommerce site. That events are button clicks. Now I want to know after clicking that event does that customer reached to Thank You Page or not? How can I do that? which type of goal I have to create? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | pragnesh96390 -
How to detect where Google gets indexed URL's
Google index some kind of way some links that create duplicate content. We doesn't understand how these are created so we would like detect where Google robots find these links. We tried: Moz Crawl Diagnostics but it shows 0 as Internal Link Count for these kind of links. Find some information from Google Analytics, that maybe there is trace (site content - all content) from visitors side. There wan't. We tried to find some information in Webmaster Tools under Internal link and HTML Improvements but didn't find any trace. Tried some search commands. Is there maybe some good one to search. TO search URL's form code with https://search.nerdydata.com.
Reporting & Analytics | | raido0 -
Google Analtyics during site redesign
Hi, We will be launching a new redesign for our website. There will be new URLs and navigation and almost everything (except for static pages like about and contact) will be different. The overwhelming opinion seems to say that it's important to keep the same Google Analytics profile. How can we compare the past URLs to the new ones if they are completely different. Does anyone have any experience in this? Did you create any segmentation? Thanks 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | WSteven0 -
URL Keyword & Meta Title Problem
I was just reviewing my Moz report and came across something I could use advice on. The Keyword is "irish cardigans" I just moved to down a place to #5. I was going to add content to the page and back link a little to get back up on rankings but I noticed it is not all matching up. My Keyword is "irish cardigans" My Url is structured: products/traditional-irish-clothing-arans My metatitle is: Irish Sweaters - Traditional Irish Clothing - Arans & Cardigans The content title on the page heading is: Irish Sweaters and Cardigans. How will I change this to get my ranking better for "Irish Cardigans" The Page is also ranking for "Traditional Irish Clothing and Irish Sweaters" How do I know if I structure it to "Irish Cardigans" I will not loose traffic etc from the other keywords. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | robbieire0 -
How to put structured data on your site?
HI All, I Would like to know your views on structured data on your site. What are the qualities and point that should keep in mind when we talking about the "structured data on your site". how we can apply structured data. How we use data highlighter for the website which don't have any events. your thoughts please.
Reporting & Analytics | | lucidsoftech
thanks0 -
Has anyone noticed a dramatic drop in direct visits year over year in GA across multiple sites?
I monitor about 10 websites in GA. Many of these sites are in a stable phase of their lifecycle. I've noticed this year that direct visits on all my sites and even friends sites have dropped by 20-60%. Has anyone seen any explanation for this or noticed this when compared to previous year? In every instance I have no penalties, notices, anything and the drop is made up completely of "direct visits".
Reporting & Analytics | | bradwayland0 -
How to find out which URLs are NOT indexed on a site
Is there a way to easily find out which URLs on a store-type site are NOT being indexed in Google? For example, if my sitemap information in Google Webmaster tools shows I have 7342 URLs in my sitemap and 5699 of those indexed, how do I find out what the 1643 non-indexed URLS are? Thanks for any help!
Reporting & Analytics | | GregWalt0