Best URL Structure For Products That Are The Same
-
I know that the url structure is very important for seo preferably using the keyword. But is it okay to have the same url with the product number at the end ? Each of our products have a name with a product number. Or will this cause to many similar urls? or if the folder is the name of the product that needs to be optimized, can the page just be called the product number?
Example:
Say you have a 20 different product lines and they are all catagorized in the appropriate folders, and need to be optimized for the actual product name.
XXX (folder name )
- WWW-PR-123
- WWW-PR-1234
- WWW-PR-12345
- WWW-PR-123456
what would be the best url structure? Can they have the same begining? The product name?
something like:
or
-
by going with either of these (/xxx/pr-123.php vs /xxx/www-pr-123.php) you are signaling to the search engines that "xxx" is the common factor and each page within that "virtual" folder would then be seen as a sub-set. So the question then is whether "www-pr-123.php" or "pr-123.php" is more appropriate for SEO purposes.
I'd say that it all depends on the importance of the "www" portion. If "www" is in fact a relevant word/phrase, either from a general search value or from a brand identity value, then it's best practices to include them in the URL. If they're neither valued for search by people who are not familiar with your specific products, or alternately, not important to people looking up your products who already know them, you can leave them out.
Another take on this would be - what's the chances someone would search for the products by part number without the www portion? And what's the chances of someone searching for the products by the "www" portion only?
While it's not necessarily critical to include every single aspect of a part's known naming convention in the URL (if you have optimized page Titles, h1, content, image names, etc), I'm guessing you want to cover the bases in how people search based on different situations, so in that case, don't leave them out.
As far as the concept of having too many URLs saturated with any aspect of category, product name or whatever, there's no need to be concerned with that if they're valid products grouped properly. It's more important to provide unique quality content on every single page. And if you're talking about many very similar products, that itself should be your biggest worry.
Just having the same descriptions repeated over and over page to page, with just a single word or part number being the difference is what would be the problem. Coming up with 100 or 150 or 200 words that are uniquely written for every product - now that's the bigger goal and far outweighs the URL repetition.
Then there's the fact that if you have all those repeated URLs, you're actually telling search engines "we've got a lot of relevant products for that topical focus". But only if you get those unique descriptions done right.
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
-
Optimising for multi sites selling same products
Hi Everyone I work for a company that sell aluminium joinery under 3 brands which are, ostensibly, competitors. With regards to optimising the websites, for keywords, should I be trying to optimise them for the same keywords, or should I use different keyword variations of each?
On-Page Optimization | | APLNZ110 -
How do you handle URLs with slashes?
I asked this question before, but with a different scenario. I upgraded my plan to a more advanced cart and all of my URLs changed about 1.5 years ago. I knew nothing about redirects and such, so none of that was done. Basically, let's say my site was: http://www.abc.com, but when people actually visit my site, they are directed to https://www.abc.com/. I have asked my host about redirecting and she that it is not possible. In the past, the link shared has been just www.abc.com . Will this hurt my ranking? My second question is ...let's say I have a link http://www.abc.com/blog , but now, the link is http://www.abc.com/blog/ . Will I be affected, since all my old links omit the slash?
On-Page Optimization | | tiffany11030 -
URL contain special character
Hello, I am using URLs which contain special character such as ', ". I found in the Google Webmaster Tool report errors related URL contain ' character. Google have indexed partial URL from beginning to ' character and cut off the rest of URL. For example: I submitted URL www.example.com/vietnam-visa-corp'-test-page.html, then google report error NOT FOUND for URL www.example.com/vietnam-visa-corp I don't know why and how to fix it? Please help! Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh1 -
View all Page for Product Overview Pages
Hi everybody! We have an ecommerce site with product overview pages, where sometimes there are hundreds of products listed. Usually, we just display 30 and have a button where users can click to see 30 more - or all products listed at once. This is the overview page (as indexed in google): http://www.geschenkidee.ch/aussergewoehnliches.html
On-Page Optimization | | zeepartner
And this is the view-all page: http://www.geschenkidee.ch/aussergewoehnliches.html#all What should I do here? The product overview page will hardly generate more traffic by listing all products (because the overview page will rank for generic keywords, while the product keyword searches will be referred to the specific product pages themselves). I was originally thinking of using rel=canonical pointing to the view-all page. But this would just lead to longer load time. Should we just leave those overview pages or is there a best practice for how to deal with such pages? Thanks for your thoughts on this!0 -
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 -
New bookingsengine url, what would you do?
A client of mine is introducing a new and improved bookingsengine. They're launching it on a different url than the existing one. The existing one needs to stay online a little bit longer for affiliate purposes. The old engine url has a sitelink in the SERPS and ranks well on a few terms. I'm wondering what you would do in this case? They want the new url to rank as quickly as possible also as sitelink of course. Any help greatly appreciated. I have some thoughts of my own of course... 🙂 But to keep the discussion as wide as possible... I'll wait a bit to add m thoughts.
On-Page Optimization | | YannickVeys0 -
URL Strucutre
Hi there, Need some advice please on URL structure. I have been doing SEO for quite sometime now, however one thing that always get me is URL structure. I have a decision to make, its either: URL 1 /conditions/allergies/food/ URL 2 /conditions/allergies-food/ Lets say i am optimizing for the key-phase "Food Allergies" what do you think is best practice? I know that this is not a major factor in gaining high SERPs & maybe i'm thinking about it too much, however your input would be really helpful. Kind Regards,
On-Page Optimization | | Paul780 -
Site URL's
We are redeveloping our website, and have the option to amend URLs (with 301 redirects from old URL to new), so my question is: Would 'golfsite.com/golf-clubs' achieve superior rankings than 'golfsite.com/clubs' for the search term 'golf clubs' if all other factors were the same? Should the URL reflect the intended search term wherever possible?
On-Page Optimization | | swgolf1230