undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. Digital Marketing
  3. Branding
  4. URL Stucture: Folders or hyphens?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

URL Stucture: Folders or hyphens?

Branding
4
5
1.7k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • Eteach_Marketing
    Eteach_Marketing last edited by Mar 13, 2013, 2:00 PM

    Hi guys,

    I've been reading through other similar asked questions regarding this but I can't seem to find the answer I need....

    I'm having a discussion with my director regarding what would be more  SEO friendly for a new page/URL we are creating.

    Is using folders or hyphens better?

    The new page is question would be something along the lines of either:

    (home page) www.eteach.com/utc

    (about us page)--> www.eteach.com/utc/about

    (talent pool page)---->www.eteach.com/utc/talent-pools

    Using the folder structure here will always show the user that they are on the UTC pages, then shows them what pages they are on int he UTC site.

    OR!

    (home page) www.eteach.com/careers-at-utc

    (about us page)--->www.eteach.com/about-utc

    (talent pool page) -----> www.eteach.com/talent-pools-at-utcs

    which doesn't make it as clear to the user, but is this way more SEO friendly?

    Can anybody make a good argument for and against folder structure vs hyphens?

    Thanks,

    Virginia

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Cyrus-Shepard
      Cyrus-Shepard last edited by Mar 15, 2013, 3:17 AM Mar 15, 2013, 3:17 AM

      Hi Virginia!

      My personal opinion and experience are that although keywords in the URL may have a minor place in Google's ranking algorithms (sometimes to a negative effect in the case of over-optimization) both keywords and URL structure have a far greater impact on user experience and click-through rate.

      A couple of studies (here's one) have shown slightly negative correlations between higher rankings and both the length of the url and number of hyphens. In other words, _shorter URLs with less hyphens tend to perform slightly better in search results. _

      On the other hand, URLs with keywords in them tend to get higher click through rates. 🙂

      There's also a couple of schools of thoughts about subdirectories vs. "flat" architecture. Some would argue that subdirectories give your content semantic structure, (i.e. everything in the utc folder could be related to one another) while others argue that a "flat" architecture with fewer folders can lead to better crawling (although I've never seen any sold evidence of this.

      Regardless, I don't believe there's one right answer.... it's best to experiment and use your best judgement as to what will lead to the best user experience.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • Cyrus-Shepard
        Cyrus-Shepard @irvingw last edited by Mar 15, 2013, 3:07 AM Mar 15, 2013, 3:07 AM

        Hi Irving...

        Really interested in your answer here, because I haven't heard this before. My understanding has always been that it doesn't make much of a difference, mostly based on comments Matt Cutts made in this 2010 Webmaster Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=971qGsTPs8M

        That said, I may be out of date on the subject. I'm sure there might be correlation data out there I'm not aware of. Any thoughts you can share on the subject would be greatly appreciated!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • TextMarketing
          TextMarketing last edited by Mar 13, 2013, 3:15 PM Mar 13, 2013, 3:15 PM

          You should be using hyphens.

          Google treats underscores as word joiners, while it treats hyphens as word separators. In other words the hyphen is like having a space between the words and tells Google and that they should be treated as two separate words.

          Matt Cutts explains it in more detail in this video...

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AQcSFsQyct8

          Hope this helps!

          • Matt
          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • irvingw
            irvingw last edited by Mar 13, 2013, 2:40 PM Mar 13, 2013, 2:13 PM

            The most important thing to remember is that keywords in folders do not help push rank, keywords in filenames do.

            So if you want a folder named /utc/ because it makes the site structure more logical than do it, but understand that it's not helping rank for "utc"

            Therefore, in my opinion this is best

            www.eteach.com/talent-pools-at-utc

            this is acceptable

            www.eteach.com/utc//talent-pools-at-utc

            this doesn't target "utc" for SEO

            www.eteach.com/utc/talent-pools

            and hyphens are better than one word or underscores

            Cyrus-Shepard 1 Reply Last reply Mar 15, 2013, 3:07 AM Reply Quote 2
            • 1 / 1
            1 out of 5
            • First post
              1/5
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • av-seo

              AdultBlock scam? Is there a downside to doing this instead....?

              So our IT guy just sent me an email from our domain registrar, encouraging us to sign up for an annual 'adultblock' service. For those that aren't sure what this is... Adultblock represents a straightforward mechanism that enables qualifying organizations to block the registration of any domain that falls under their trademark. This includes unlimited variants based on the holder's labels. Instead of worrying about registering and managing many different adult related TLDs, it is possible to block trademarked domains under all four TLDs for up to ten years through just one action. Unfortunately, this service is not cheap, and I'm starting to wonder about the 'downside' of NOT doing it. Does anyone know if just purchasing the adult related TLDs for our domain, and then just sitting on them, would have any sort of negative effect on our SEO?  Alternatively, could we just set an alert for when / if those domains ever get purchased and then just disavow those sites in search console? Thanks!!

              Branding | Jan 5, 2021, 5:40 PM | av-seo
              0
            • Ravi_Rana

              Can we use Youtube Videos of google webmaster on blog post?

              Is it okay to embed YouTube videos of channel which we don't own? For example, I have written a blog on enabling event search in Google Analytics and Google Webmasters YouTube channel has a video based on those steps. I am looking to add that video in my blog.

              Branding | Jul 5, 2024, 5:28 PM | Ravi_Rana
              0
            • Navya124

              Changed the trailing slashes - how it effect SEO?

              Hi,  I'm doing a project called https://www.machinerygate.com/ Due to trailing slashes issues, our developer requests to remove the trailing slashes from the URLs. However, the homepage with and without trailing slashes the same effect right. How about the inner pages affect SEO. Because we just started to do SEO and not even one single link of Inner pages done with the process. However, for example, the URL for https://www.machinerygate.com/machinery/cranes/ is before with trailing slashes and it is on google indexed with trailing slashes. Due to some bug, google inspection tool has been not functioning nowadays and I'm finding hard to index the new URL without trailing slashes https://www.machinerygate.com/machinery/cranes to index on Google. If this gets indexed, how the URL with trailing slashes will be, does it automatically redirect to URL without trailing slashes or not? Please share your thought about this concern.

              Branding | Oct 20, 2020, 5:16 AM | Navya124
              1
            • stephenfishman

              Why not just use an alias if the only change is a different domain Name?

              We are rebranding our store with a new name. We have purchased a NewDomainName.  Can I just make the "Old Domain Name" an alias for the "NewDomainName"? The site will not change in any other way than having a new logo.  This is an e-commerce site with over 100 categories of artisan made products.  So once we move the site, the old domain will be empty. Thank you Stephen

              Branding | Feb 1, 2020, 9:29 PM | stephenfishman
              1
            • camille1

              Rate My Logo!

              Hey guys, Can't for the life of me decide which color pallet to use for this logo, so please let me know your thoughts! The logo is for a website that specialises in Instagram social media marketing - So without further ado... Green, Blue or Blue with Red Heart? Thoughts, feedback and anything else you want to add! DBFnY

              Branding | Apr 25, 2024, 8:19 AM | camille1
              0
            • DigitalNTT

              In the Google search results, the company name (with the drop down arrow) next to the result URL is incorrect. The company being displayed here is a company we acquired many years back. How do I adjust/fix this?

              When I search any term for my organization, we are getting good results BUT the company name, next to the results URL is of an orgnization we acquired many years back and not the name of our company.  The  URL is correct page JUST the company name next to this URL is incorrect on the Google search results page. How do I go about changing so the company name next to the URL ?

              Branding | May 6, 2015, 4:15 PM | DigitalNTT
              0
            • SilhouetteBS

              1 Website, 2 Business Names, 2 Locations

              I took on a dentist office as an SEO client. They have 1 website, 2 business names and 2 locations. Each location has it's own business name. They are both within the same city as well. I'm not exactly sure where to start with them since they have 2 different business names. If it were 1 name with multiple locations I would just create a Contact Us page for each one, but is that the best thing to do when the location names are different? Should I create a different website for each location or is that smart because then they are competing against each other? Any help from the community on the direction I should take would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

              Branding | Nov 23, 2023, 12:14 PM | SilhouetteBS
              0
            • daniel.alvarez

              Two domains for different countries? or one big domain with folders?

              I know this might sound as a newbie question or maybe not, here it goes. I've had a client for the past 2 years, and we have accomplish many good things for his local website .com.ve (venezuela). It's been so good that he is opening a branch in Dominican republic .com.do. The content, strategy and even the services are exactly the same, but the owner  wants to have different site for each country. Of course he only wants to pay for one domain. I do want to share our success ont the .com.ve with the other domains and he actually owns the "global" domain .com with his brand name. So, what should I reccomend... Develop a second site and start from scratch? Migrate my blog from the .com.ve site to the .com site and give each country a separate folder? /ve /do?. What it's the best scenario for me to have all the traffic we have earned transfer to the global brand and to have separate info for each country... Thank you so much for your answer that I kno would be great. Dan

              Branding | May 28, 2013, 7:55 PM | daniel.alvarez
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.