Question about web site structure
-
Is there an SEO advantage for individual pages to be in sub folders vs not being in a folder? Of course site managemnt is easier with folders if you have 100;s of pages...clearly a shorter URL is easier for humans to naviagte.
vs.
-
I'm not sure I understand your question John, and the second URL is a 404. Could you expand your question a bit? Thanks!
-
Hi Keri and community,
So is it a link juice mistake on my site
www.shearerpainting.com/recyclepaint.index
I created the sub folder and landing page specifically for a new campaign "recycle paint" with video and content and links
-
I've gone ahead and marked this thread as answered, even though we haven't heard from John. Thanks for your great recap!
-
Hi John. I'm surprised this question isn't considered answered yet as the group seems to touch on all the bases. Here's a recap:
- Richard Getz highlights the ability to add keywords via folders but cautions against adding too many folders (historically due to crawling issues).
- David Lenehan cautions against too many folders causing duplicate content issues and ungainly website architecture.
- Keri Morgret highlights the usefulness of folders in Analytics to help track specific portions of content. The moz also discusses this in their excellent post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-powerful-analytics-tip-every-website-should-employ
"By segmenting out traffic to URLs that include /blog/ and those that include /ugc/ (YOUmoz), we can see when/where/how each section is rising or falling in traffic and contributing to the overall site's performance."
- Fatwallet cautions against spam negating benefits in either and emphasizes linking as driving more value regardless.
- Aaron Dicks recommends a CMS to give you strength and flexibility in organizing your content.
- While Pashmina reminds us of the usefulness of redirects when curtailing duplicate content or sending lost link strength to a page in greater need.
And finally since you were asking about domain\folder\page vs domain\page you're not going to run into subdomain issues. If a short folder category makes since in analytics it's definitely worth it. Just look at the URL above... we're in the 'q' folder. Hope that helps.
-
John,
Did any of these responses answer your question, or do you still have more questions? If you could add a comment or mark a helpful response, that'd be great!
-
There are a lot of answers on here with regards to .html files and folders. The most efficient and easily-manageable solution here is to migrate to a good Content Management System that can handle categorys and page parents (I prefer Wordpress)
Products can be categorised one or two deep (suggested max for Search Engines) and URL's will reflect the product description. I.e is the item is a widget or type foo, being in url www.example.com/foo/widget/product-name would be a great structure, as both foo and widget might be part of the search term for the product, and they will also appear on the product page naturally as you describe the product.
This also helps the Keyword cannibalisation problem, as you will be able to see through administration that there are multiple pages doing the same thing.
Essentially in answer to your question, go one or two deep if it will help your users. Don't go more than 2 as Search Engines may not crawl that far if you have a young/non-authorative domain.
Hope this helps,
Aaron
-
I am gonna vote up with 1 folder level. There is no evidence of it, but its possibly that the juice would not pass through as well if there are many directories/sub-directories
-
I agree with Richard and Joel. No more than 3 levels deep for categories. And I'd like to add, that it's good to create redirects for alternative categories or links. If a product can belong to 2 sub categories, have both links work. eg. domain.com/category/subcategory-primary/product.html -> would be main link domain.com/category/subcategory-secondary/product.html -> would redirect to above And while this is not necessarily an SEO advantage, having clean, short and organized categories helps create a good user experience and easy way finding for your users and leads to higher conversion rates.
-
That's a really good point.
I'm glad GA form fields accept regular expressions
-
Don't overlook the usefulness of folders when it comes to Google Analytics. Lunametrics has a post on designing a site that is friendly with GA at http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2010/09/22/designing-google-analytics-friendly-site/.
-
Google is going to trust your link structure more than the subdirectories in the url.
Make your urls clean, try to get a good keyword in there, but DON'T stuff and make them obnoxious and spammy.
There IS typically an advantage to a flatter architecture, but if the content is rich and the longer tail potential is high a deeper architecture will serve just fine.
-
Too many sub folders isn't good for SEO and you can have problems with duplicate content. Personally I would go with the first option. I try to ensure products have the following URL structure
store.com/product-laser-gadget.html
You need to avoid the following situation;
store.com/gadget/product-laser-gadget.html
-
Thanks Joel can you give me an example?
www.donuts/glazed/chocalate glazed
-
If Susan does not get you some backlinks, nothing will
-
Richard you are going to laugh...so I just made a new video and added sitemap, and I am jacked up about getting another keyword in so i made
http://www.shearerpainting.com/PaintColors/susanmarinello.php
but my HTML is so poori cant figure out menu's page architecture, blah , blah so I tempoarily put this up:
-
None that I can think of.
If you have categories, it not only allows the use of another keyword, but you get to make a landing page for that keyword. domain.com/category/index.php would be used for keywords and also redirecting link juice once a product was deleted as explained here: (scroll to the bottom)
http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-do-you-do-about-links-to-constantly-moving-pages
When you link build, you can use these landing pages to point links to. Also good for link baiting.
There are several reasons to have these types of pages. It would depend on what your site is composed of, but you can add videos, how-tos, related blog post, etc.
All of which get a user in a direction, attract links, and help get link juice to deeper pages.
-
Thanks Richard, Is there any advantge to have all my pages only go 1 deep?
-
Sure, the most obvious is the use of a keyword, but don't go more than 3 deep. domain.com/category1/category2/product.html
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
-
What causes rankings to drop while moving a site.
Hi, we recently moved a PHP based site from one web developer to another (switched hosting providers as well). Amidst the move our rankings drastically dropped and our citation and trust flow were literally cut in half as per Majestic SEO. What could have caused this sudden drop?
Web Design | | Syed_Raza0 -
Anyone migrated a site from PHP into ASP? Anyone migrated into Sitecore?
We have a network of websites in Linux-based PHP and we may be switching them over to ASP.NET and using SiteCore CMS. Right now, we don't have a CMS. We would also be switching from using file extension www.site.com/file.php to no extensions www.site.com/file/ therefore altering our directory structure. We are aware of the potential impacts to traffic of the initial migration, but are now more curious about SiteCore CMS and SEO, performance and indexation/crawlability. Has anyone made this move before or considered making it? Can you offer any success stories, horror stories?
Web Design | | Eric_edvisors0 -
Having a second homepage for a site would affect my SEO?
Hello guys, One of our clients is planning to have a new landing page for any users hitting the site for the first time. (returning users will still see the current homepage based on cookies ... in other words, the site would technically have 2 home pages). According to this client, they are planning to do something like this: https://www.websitename.com/ (for returning visitors) https://www.websitename.com/newuser (for first time visitors) Our instinct is that is not great to have 2 home pages (that would affect the SEO campaign we are managing for this company) and we are not sure how to handle this. That's why we would appreciate your opinion regarding this topic: From an SEO perspective, do you think this is a good idea? If not, what would you guys do differentiate first-time visitors vs returning visitors without affecting SEO? Maybe just a pop-up? Thanks in advance for your help !
Web Design | | Robertnweil10 -
From Google Sites to Wordpress - Anyone Ventured this SEO terrain?
We have a few sites in Google Sites - and they are ugly! We have a majority (40+) of websites in Wordpress. But we have a few websites just stuck on Google Sites, and since Google won't let you fully edit the HTML, add scripts, or implement any technology since 2000, we want to move. The sad problem - the Google sites are ranking well. We rank well in Manhattan, Atlanta, Dallas, and Philadelphia. The problem is - the sites do not give much room for growth - and the bounce rate is high because they are so ugly. Has Anyone moved from Google sites to Wordpress? Should we just stay with Google and bite the ugly bullet? My fear is that these sites will not allow for growth. It is hard to update them and even harder to make them look nice. To get a sample - beware: www.counselingphiladelphia.com Even another reason to leave: The slider is non-semantic and terrible SEO. Google won't allow a slider script with tags and a hrefs, so the only way to implement a slider is through a Google Docs Presentation that keeps sliding. I know - terrible SEO (#donthate) but we needed something. Any advice and thoughts would help! Thanks Mozzers!
Web Design | | _Thriveworks0 -
Worth Splitting Up Main Site into Several Microsites?
The company I work for offers a variety of very different products, that are sold to different audiences. Right now (and for the past 4 years) all the products have been listed on one main website. Over the years, we have accumulated over 200,000 links and rank relatively well in most of the product-specific keywords. Still, for business purposes we really feel that having a unique site specific to each product would be more beneficial than having them all on one site. What are the pros and cons of making a move to different subdomains from a main site. (i.e. instead of www.cleanedison.com/solar we would set up a solar.cleanedison.com)
Web Design | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
Website Design Structure
When having a website designed, is it best to have a Responsive Design with Media Queries or is it best to have a Website designed for laptops andDesktops and a second mobil website? What are the SEO benefits of each strategy and Which is best for the user experience?
Web Design | | bronxpad1 -
Effect of Off-Site Images
I'm getting to start work with a new client, and I've run across something I've never had to deal with before, off-site images. The site I'll be working on is for an appliance retailer, both online and physical. The way they've had their site built (not something I was part of) a third party company maintains the product inventory side of things. They're sourcing from about 35 different manufacturers, and this third party has direct access to the product information streams. They push the weekly updated information to my clients site. What this means, though, is that the product images don't live on the client's site. They're hotlinked from the third party's inventory doohickey. I've never seen something quite like this before. Has anyone else? Any ideas as to what problems I may face when it comes to on-site SEO?
Web Design | | MRCSearch0 -
Finally have a budget for a great seo ecommerce site but need help choosing wordpress, joomla, modx, magneto or? Thank you in advance for your generosity of time
We finally have a budget and want to dump our intuit/homestead site www.originalartbroker.com Our budget is 5k-10k but could do more if needed. I am slowly catching my competition with this homestead site that I built. But I do realize it is time to step back, figure out what is best, and hire a pro to get the job done. I am green in the seo and web development arena so please go easy on me and please help to point me in the right direction. Just went out on a limb a couple years ago playing with homestead.com site software and built what we have today. Didn't know anything about website development...it sort of just happened. I feel and know that homestead.com solution is hindering what we could be doing due to the bloated nature of the site and inability to perform such task as 301 redirects etc.... I have been able to slowly attain first page seo rankings on keywords based of the artists we carry using this po-dunk homestead platform to build my site after a ton of work education thanks to seomoz and a lot of you. But, have never asked for help and could really use some generosity of time in explaining a solution that would work best for our business. Do we just go with a wordpress site that is similar to our current setup and use their plugins? Do we use a cms software solution like magneto or joomla? We will only have 200-300 pieces at any given time. We are constantly selling and buying new pieces providing us content. We are need of a site that can perform well in terms of seo. I have heard of a lot of people talking about joomla, wordpress, and magneto. Would like to be able to have a product catalogue that ultimately sends whatever inventory we are uploading to our social sites and blogs so I don’t have to pump the product out to all of these sites. We offer free custom framing with our pieces and it would be nice to have a program that could wrap the photos of the pieces with the different frames for our customers. When I add a new piece I would like this software to have a predesigned product page that it plugs the information into. I would like it to create the url extension based of the artists name, medium used, and piece name to create unique and individual urls. I would like it to also create its own H tags throughout that product page according to the artist name description, and medium used. I would like to be able to sink this up to google merchant and other sites to carry our product. Bottom line is we sell art. We sell pieces by specific artists. We are constantly buying and selling. I need something powerful that keeps up with our content
Web Design | | forecastedinvestments1