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  4. Url folder structure

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Url folder structure

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  • Vacatia_SEO
    Vacatia_SEO last edited by Mar 27, 2015, 3:58 PM

    I work for a travel site and we have pages for properties in destinations and am trying to decide how best to organize the URLs

    basically we have our main domain, resort pages and we'll also have articles about each resort so the URL structure will actually get longer:
    A. domain.com/main-keyword/state/city-region/resort-name
    _    domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_

    _   domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature    _
    _   domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village/kid-friend-pool_

    B. Another way to structure would be to remove the location and keyword folders and combine. Note that some of the resort names are long and spaces are being replaced dynamically with dashes. 
    ex. domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name
    _      domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_

    _      domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature_
    _      domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village-kid-friend-pool_

    Question: is that too many folders or should i combine or break up? What would you do with this? Trying to avoid too many dashes.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Alick300
      Alick300 last edited by Mar 29, 2015, 1:05 PM Mar 29, 2015, 1:05 PM

      Hi Eric,

      I am sharing one article on how site can have structured URLs. This article explained exact issue that you have mentioned in your question.

      http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/structured-urls/

      Thanks

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • RyanPurkey
        RyanPurkey last edited by Mar 27, 2015, 4:50 PM Mar 27, 2015, 4:50 PM

        Hi Eric. I'd recommend using folders as being navigational and/or site-section specific. As such, they can be shorter--like the two letter abbreviation for states--and create less worries about URL length that way. A ton of other signals are going to be contributing to a page being recognized as being about a resort in Florida than FL vs Florida in the URL alone.

        Once you have your structure figured out, using hyphenated URLs that often mimic the title tag of the page is generally a best practice as this gives the user the best idea of what a link is about while also containing keywords when someone links to the page solely via URL.  The Moz blog has plenty of examples such as: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-stop-spam-bots-from-ruining-your-analytics-referral-data.. Short domain, short folder name, then the content. Each bit is readable and understandable as to why it's there.

        See: http://moz.com/learn/seo/url for more.  Cheers!

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