Seeking URL Advice
-
Hey Moz Community,
I'm looking for some URL structure advice for a new directory of a website. We're trying to rank for the term 'internships abroad in <country>'</country> We have roughly 100 pages targeting specific countries.
Right now the URL structure is www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/china, but some of my colleagues believe this structure would be better: www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/intern-in-china. I personally prefer the shorter structure, but we couldn't come to any agreement so we thought we'd pose the question to the community.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the correction Keri. You are absolutely correct and I fixed my reply based on your sharp eyes
-
Thanks again for your feedback!
These pages are all pretty new (4 weeks tops), but we are aware of the link juice issue. Our purposed solution has been to create a page that lists all of our country pages (approx. 125) and have this page linked to from our homepage. Hopefully Google can then get from our homepage to all of our country pages in two jumps.
Sound?
-
I would go with the shorter URL structure in this case (http://www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/china) and use on-page key term targeting (as stated above) to help with semantic definition of the page content.
I noticed that none of the country specific pages have Page Authority (using SEOmoz toolbar) -- I'm not an expert on Drupal so not sure if the pages are brand new (they all have very recent cache dates and don't show up in the Internet Archive) -- or if the 'CTools jump menu' is preventing link juice from passing which will be difficult getting them to rank (unless they receive inbound links at some point).
-
Thanks, Anthony, for your response. Just to clarify how our CMS works, however, internships-abroad is actually a subdirectory of gooverseas.com. Removing the slash is not possible in this situation.
Does this alter your advise?
Thanks!
-
Ryan, I presume you didn't mean to include a space between internships and abroad, and that the primary recommendation should read mysite.com/internships-abroad/china?
-
Hi Andrew -
Shorter URLs generally out perform longer URLs. Also, fewer directories or file paths in he URL makes it easier to distribute link juice to the detail pages throughout the site (this necessitates a fairly flat file structure though and may not be the right solution for larger sites with diverse content, products & information requiring more complex taxonomies - this doesn't seem to be necessary in your case however).
I would suggest www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad-china ... you get your keyword phrase in the URL with an economy of words in the process - leaving out '-in-' will save 4 character spaces. You can make up for this in your on-page key term targeting using meta tags, H1's, etc to create the semantic drill-down.
TY
-
I'm looking for some URL structure advice for a new directory of a website. We're trying to rank for the term 'internships abroad in <country>'</country>
My primary recommendation is:
mysite.com/internships-abroad/china
The above URL is a logical structure. You have one page for each country. You also can offer a category page providing general information such as general advice applicable to anyone considering an internship in another country. The URL has relevancy for your keywords, your site structure and readers. It's not spammy as keywords are not repeated.
Another URL structure that works is:
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
-
Toxic URL???
Hi I have a URL that produced page 1, number 1 to 3 for most of our industries top phrases. Then we received a google penalty, (as did several of our competitors on the same day). We were effectively wiped from google. After much disavowing we were allowed back into the search results, this took about 3 months. I have employed the services of a top London SEO company for over a year now and have seen no significant improvement. I believe they are doing there best, however there results are VERY poor. According to the various tools, (searchmetrics, woorank, semrush) to name but a few, our site scores very well, yet we are not getting the results. Page one seems to be full of totally new websites, most of which I have never heard of, and have appeared from nowhere. Should I scrap our URL and put up a completely new one, and put a redirect from the original one? This would be a biggy since our url has been around for 20 years. Thanks for reading. Andy
On-Page Optimization | | First-VehicleLeasing0 -
I'm starting an online training school and need some advice.
Hey Moz'ers, I'm looking start an online training website. I feel there is 3 options: Self hosted LMS (Moodle, Litmos etc), Sass solution (Academy of Mine, Pathwright etc) Or DIY with Chargify type payments/subscriptions. To get started it is easiest to use one of the software as a service options. I get to use my own domain but everything else is via the software provider. **What potential problems can you see if/when I decided to do my own self hosted option? Will I be able to redirect the pages to my new site and pass along my accumulated page rank with minimal disruption or am I missing something catastrophic? ** Any advice would be helpful.
On-Page Optimization | | danlovesadobe0 -
Canonical URL Category and Tags
Hello, I would like to know that I want to use both category and tags in my blog StylishMahi. If I index both category and tags, should I use canonical URL tag to pass referring to main category. As I want more my categories in SERP results ranking higher? I have also attached a picture. Can someone please confirm? Photo by Moz ZigdWMx
On-Page Optimization | | PratapSingh0 -
301 redirects, efficiency and dynamic URLs
Hi, I have 2 301 redirect questions. Question 1: I have am working with a designer on the redesign of a website that currently has over 5,000 indexed pages. The majority of these are dynamic URLs from the Stone Locator database. (see below) http://www.domain.com/storelocator.php?zipcode=91784&page=12 How can I efficiently deal with these pages from an SEO perspective when developing the new site? Is there a way to do a bulk 301 redirect to a store locator page, for instance? Question 2: If a rel=canonical tag has been established on a page (www....), is it necessary to add 301 redirects to all of the other versions on: the home page (domain.com , domain.com/index.html, domain.com/index.html, etc.) all other pages with those same extensions ? Thank you for your help! Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Keyword in URL?
I have a website that has been live for about 8yrs. I do not have any significant rankings for my main keywords but am now starting SEO on my site. I am contemplating changing the url to contain the main keyword prefixed by my brand name. Any views on the ranking benefits and or CTR benefits.
On-Page Optimization | | Johnnyh
Example:
Main Volume keyword - 'car leasing'
current url - www.bobleasing.co.uk (made up name) thinking of changing to - www.bobcarleasing.co.uk (made up name) Any advice would be much appreciated. John0 -
Two different keywords - one URL
We're new to SEO, but have two keywords that are really not quite the same, but Google has targeted the same URL for us ... which means that SEO Moz is recommending we optimize the same URL, for opposite keywords (using the on page SEO). For example, the keywords (these aren't our keywords) of say, "beer brewing" and "ways to make beer for small breweries" are both pointing at our home page. The on page SEO is showing that "beer brewing" is a rank of say, a google ranking of 9. However, "ways to ..." is a google ranking of 47. So ... what am I supposed to do now? Do I rewrite the page to have "ways to ..." more prominent? I cannot really have the title and h1's include both ... What do I do now? We have about 3 or 4 of these "pairs". -- Anthony
On-Page Optimization | | apresley0 -
URL length does it really make a difference
I am currently working redevloping my site, I have terribly long URL's according to SEOMoz, can someone cover the real benefit of my editing my URLs, and then putting in all of those redirects. Should I edit old material? My site has been in wordpressformat for a couple of years now.
On-Page Optimization | | copykatrecipes0 -
Redirecting to a keyword-rich domain URL
It's best practice to choose a domain that has keyword in it. But if someone has just launched a website and the domain name does not have keyword, is it better to purchase a new domain name that has a keyword in the name and redirect existing domain to the new domain? Will that help SEO? (This just launched website does not have any traffic or links yet.)
On-Page Optimization | | Amjath0