Directories...
-
So, I have a website, and I have a few pages in directories, and the rest are normal with extensions (i.e. example.com/blah.html instead of example.com/blah/)
Now, the directory page isnt ranking yet for a targeting keyword (although I am still in the process of link building to the page w/ anchor text), however, could it be because it is the odd man out being one of the only pages within a directory?
Also, I would really like to move all my pages into directories, however some of the internal pages are ranking really well and I do not want to lose that once switching. Has anyone has experiences with using 301s to redirect so sub directories without loosing rankings?
-
The reason I would like to make the change, is to make the urls easier for visitors to remember, also, to make the urls look more professional. I personally feel that example.com/blah.html just looks kind of sloppy.
Thanks for your answers.
-
The first question I would ask is, why do you wish to change your current structure? What benefit does it offer you or your visitors? If there isn't a clear, direct benefit I would advise against making a change.
If there is a benefit and you wish to make the change, it shouldn't be a problem at all. You can re-arrange your site as long as you 301 every page properly. There will be a minor loss of link juice, but if this is indeed an improvement for your site, that loss should be offset by your improved site navigation.
I don't believe the directory page you mention is not ranking due to being the only page in a directory. The questions I would ask are how deep is that page within your site? I do not mean how many directories deep. I refer to how many clicks would a user need to make to arrive on that page from your home page? If a user can get there is one click, it should be indexed relatively quickly. If it takes several clicks, then that page is buried within your site and it can take longer to be indexed.
-
I think time is the biggest element here, as there is a chance that the content has yet to be crawled or indexed. While I have read that there is benefit to having links as close to the root page/domain as possible, I don't believe pages being a directory or two away matters all that much.
You would definitely want to do proper redirection if you are going to change your url structure site wide. If you are utilizing a platform like wordpress this is rather easy.
You might also want to consider keeping the current structure in tact, and creating links on the previous well ranked page. I would most likely go with the 301 redirect, but have seen popular blogs/sites simply put a link on the previous page to the new page. That way the popular page will still be seen but the new link will be easily crawled and indexed.
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
-
How should I handle conflict between custom taxonomy and categories in a directory site?
Hello! I posted about this a week ago but haven't solidly figured it out yet. I'm building a website that is a directory of local therapists. I have categories for my blog and custom taxonomy to classify therapists. My problem is that my categories and my custom taxonomy overlap by necessity. For example I have the category "anxiety therapy" and the custom taxonomy "anxiety". Will this confuse google?...Do you think google will be able to figure out the differences between my blog archives and my therapist listing archives?...even though their names are similar and in a couple of cases the same? should I noindex my categories because the point of my site is to get customers to the directory....not the blog?.....even though the blog has lots of useful content? I should note here that I have my custom taxonomy pages set up so that they will display the 6 most recent blog posts in the corresponding category at the bottom of the page....so maybe that makes noindexing the categories more ok? Thank you for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | angelamaemae0 -
How do I get the sub-domain traffic to count as sub-directory traffic without moving off of WordPress?
I want as much traffic as possible to my main site, but right now my blog lives on a blog.brand.com URL rather than brand.com/blog. What are some good solutions for getting that traffic to count as traffic to my main site if my blog is hosted on WordPress? Can I just create a sub-directory page and add a rel canonical to the blog post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | johnnybgunn0 -
Directory Quality for Citation Building
Hello All, Just started to work on a new clients site that has been hit with multiple google penalties. I was looking at their backlink profile and noticed they have numerous links from what seem to be very low quality directory websites. My question is, when building citations and looking for directories to submit to, what makes one directory more credible then another one? If most of them are just publishing links and business information, why does google consider one credible and the other spammy? Clearly with some it's easy to tell if they are credible or not, but with some it is not as easy. Should you only really be submitting to the best of the best or are some lower lever ones ok too? Have read a few things on this topic, but most is older and just want to hear what people have to say on this today. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whebb0 -
Robots.txt, does it need preceding directory structure?
Do you need the entire preceding path in robots.txt for it to match? e.g: I know if i add Disallow: /fish to robots.txt it will block /fish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Milian
/fish.html
/fish/salmon.html
/fishheads
/fishheads/yummy.html
/fish.php?id=anything But would it block?: en/fish
en/fish.html
en/fish/salmon.html
en/fishheads
en/fishheads/yummy.html
**en/fish.php?id=anything (taken from Robots.txt Specifications)** I'm hoping it actually wont match, that way writing this particular robots.txt will be much easier! As basically I'm wanting to block many URL that have BTS- in such as: http://www.example.com/BTS-something
http://www.example.com/BTS-somethingelse
http://www.example.com/BTS-thingybob But have other pages that I do not want blocked, in subfolders that also have BTS- in, such as: http://www.example.com/somesubfolder/BTS-thingy
http://www.example.com/anothersubfolder/BTS-otherthingy Thanks for listening0 -
Directory backlink
Hello everyone, I know that this question has been asked millions of time, but I am really not getting a straight answer for it. Well the question will be divided in few other questions : Google changed, I get that, but I am reading everywhere, come up with a great content and the rest will follow, stop creating your own backlink and let user link to you ... But I don't know if this is apply for every site on the web, let take the example of a flash gaming site that we manage, we are creating games every day, coming up with great (unique) text for each of them, we are active on social media and stopped backlink from directories. But now we can see our sites losing ranking and seeing some websites that are not having much content on their sites or even active on social medias that are ranking better than us. We always used white hat techniques, this is why we were so well ranked for so long, but now we see our ranking change on a daily basis but can't explained why. So my question is, should we totally stop directories backlink (even the good directories)? Or we should keep on going and try PR at the same time? For a site that just started how on earth will he be able to get backlinks if it's not using directories in the first place? So I feel that I am going in circle here and I don't know what else we could do to improve our site. We even recast the site to bring better experience to the user to see if this will help on us on getting our ranking back. And this help, as the page views and time on the site improved with it, but the ranking is still unchanged (that has been done 3 months ago). Just to let you know we are aware about the panda and penguin updates 🙂 Thanks for your help on this, and I hope the answers will help others 🙂 Thanks, Mounir
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | drimlike0 -
How to optimise a local business directory?
Hey All, I've a new client who is a local business directory designed to promote local businesses across the UK but starting in it's home town of Brighton in the UK. I'm a little stumped to know how I can start to optimise this site as most of the pages being created are from very different businesses and focus on different subjects. I realise this is going to be a long haul but wondered if there are any tips you guys know of. My client domain is: call-us-first.co.uk Thanks Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevecounsell0 -
.htaccess - error404 redirect within a directory?
Hi, One of my clients has a CMS website offering Health and Safety training. When the courses have been run they automatically drop off of the system which is great for the front-end of the site but this leaves pile 404 errors for the URLs. I am trying to put a .htaccess redirect in place that will redirect back to the main category for that course i/e : http://www.domain.co.uk/courses/highways/6-NRSWA/27-nrswa-operative-sept-11.html will redirect to http://www.domain.co.uk/courses/highways/6-NRSWA I have spent a looooong time hitting google for a solution but can't seem to come up with anything. If at all possible I would also like to be able to post a php variable via the redirect url so that I can display a message on the category page saying that the course is no longer available be please select a different course. i/e: http://www.domain.co.uk/courses/highways/6-NRSWA?course=not-available Any help on this would be most gratefully received.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis0 -
Removing URLs in bulk when directory exclusion isn't an option?
I had a bunch of URLs on my site that followed the form: http://www.example.com/abcdefg?q=&site_id=0000000048zfkf&l= There were several million pages, each associated with a different site_id. They weren't very useful, so we've removed them entirely and now return a 404.The problem is, they're still stuck in Google's index. I'd like to remove them manually, but how? There's no proper directory (i.e. /abcdefg/) to remove, since there's no trailing /, and removing them one by one isn't an option. Is there any other way to approach the problem or specify URLs in bulk? Any insights are much appreciated. Kurus
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kurus1