Keep our category navigation in tree structure but move our URLs to a more flat structure. Good plan?
-
In our Magento store, products are arranged into categories, subcategories and so on. We typically have 3 or 4 layers of category depth.
This makes it nice and easy for customers to find stuff, but it means that the end categories have massive long urls.
I'd like to keep our category tree structure in place from a navigation point of view, but I feel the url structure is pushing some important stuff to the back of the shop as it were. We have something like 200 categories in total.
So, assuming every individual category has an a unique name, I'd like to rewrite the urls so that:
ourshop.com/car-parts/
stays as
ourshop.com/car-parts/ourshop.com/car-parts/suspension/
becomes
ourshop.com/suspension/ourshop.com/car-parts/suspension/springs
becomes
ourshop.com/springs/ourshop.com/car-parts/suspension/springs/thismake-lowering-springs
becomes
ourshop.com/thismake-lowering-springs/and so on....
I'll need some custom magento URL rewrite work done, but that's another story. The real question is whether you guys feel this is worthwhile?Are there any other stores with a deep categorised navigation structure, but a flat url structure?
thanks,
James
-
In which case I guess it comes down to how impactful any disruption might be....i.e., how many links do you have built up against your existing URLs?
If there isn't many - then its probably worth taking the jump and re-writing stuff now.
Ben
-
Cheers Ben,
I'm not so worried about the mechanics of rewriting the old URLs and keeping them unique as I can have all that covered. fairly easily
I'm more interested in how beneficial the end results may be and whether it's worth a disruption.
cheers,
James
-
I prefer flat URL structures, but I would think twice about the effort if my existing URL strings had built up some nice link equity.
When I worked at Premier Farnell for example, we went for flat URL structures without the hierarchy included, i.e., http://uk.farnell.com/d-subminiature rather than http://uk.farnell.com/connectors/d-subminiature
In my current role the URL strings are not great, but its a legacy thing before I started here: http://www.asiarooms.com/en/singapore/singapore/orchard_road.html but the site has strong link equity built up into many of the pages and I am loathed to go through another exercise of updating them and risking loss of business (even if only short term) as I suspect the benefit is probably not worth that cost.
Its a balancing act I guess.
Also, just be careful if you do decide to flatten them that you don't potentially caused duplication. For example, imagine you have duplicate categories called accessories.....you can only have 1 URL called http://ourshop.com/accessories so you might need to add some rules in to handle those correctly.
Ben
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
-
Wordpress / Full URL In Menu Box
I came across an article online (not Moz) that says adding the full url in a menu is a Google standard. So when you make a menu link you put "www.example.com/page" instead of "/page". What are your thoughts on this? Any real reason to? Y840pbN lrwZPDj
On-Page Optimization | | InfinityTechnologySolutions0 -
Best URL structure for my page
Hey everyone, I am wondering what is the best URL structure for my activity booking page in Bali. http://www.thingstodoinbali.com/bali/sports/water-sports/rafting/ or http://www.thingstodoinbali.com/bali/sports/water-sports/rafting-bali/ or would you recommend something else? Most people would google for "activity bali" in this case "rafting bali". Please advice. Thanks for your time and help in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | c.eiermann0 -
Craw structure for web site about jobs?
Hi there, we have now a client who has a job offering web site.There are many craw errors in it. My question is how should the url structure in a jobs website look like and which pages should be indexed? What is the best way and tips for optimizing a job website? Now the posted jobs pages are dynamically like: examplejob.com/detail-job/1891222223/Careers-for-Mens---Womens/Experienced-Web-Design-Need I see many job websites allow their job offers to be indexed and may be this is useful because some people find jobs also when directly search in Google. Are they using dynamically urls for that? And also my related question is what happens when the job offer expires? When Google craws that page again should it be redirected to 404 page or the original job offer text should be there and just to be added info that this job offer has expired? Otherwise If only it's written that it has expired may be there will be too much duplicate content on many many pages.
On-Page Optimization | | vladokan0 -
Word structure on page optimization
My question is this. I have a scrabble dictionary site and I list a ton of words on the page. I removed then as links just in case Google might be thinking i am spamming, but could there be a difference in listing words like this word1, word2, word3, word4, word5 and instead like this word1 word2 word3 word4 word5 could the first way trigger Google that I am spamming?
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0 -
Tags or Categories: Which is best?
I seem to have duplicate issues on my website due to tags and categories having the same title. If I was to delete one of the two, which would be better to delete? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | IoanSaid0 -
Product merchandising category creation
I work on a site selling clothing, and we break up our clothing into categories of types of clothing. Right now in my accessories, I have an other category, which cover the miscellaneous items that there aren't enough to warrant their own categories. I was curious what people thought about further breakdowns of this category. Do I create a category that only has one item in it? Is there a certain threshold of number of items which should signal that these items need their own categories or length of time they're expected to be available to buy? Right now, I'm not targeting the one-off items for SEO purposes because we tend not to carry them from season to season or continue with them long enough to be the best use of my SEO time.
On-Page Optimization | | kennyrowe0 -
Absolute vs Relative URLs
What are the pros and cons of these two types of URLs and what type of weight does this hold. It doesn't seem to be a big issue in regards to ranking. Any qualified clarity would help.
On-Page Optimization | | Romancing0