URL Structure for a local listing site
-
Hi -
We have a site that offers customers with wide range of local businesses information. We have URL structure for those these days like this -
site.com/listings/plumbers/ca/sfo
However here the "listings" doesn't add any value and are confusing for users who want to remember it, hence we decided to make it cleaner. The question here is, which one of the two should we do and why?
or
Any help on this matter would help.
-
I'm working on URL structure for the same business model. Loved your answer Jane
-
Hi there,
Which structure is best depends on the structure of the website from an information architecture point of view more than anything else. For example, do you have a main California page, to which you link to a San Francisco page, on which all the services in SF are listed? Or do you have a landing page for professions such as plumbing, to which you link to different areas, i.e. California and San Francisco?
If California is the parent and SF / plumbing are under that, then /ca/sfo/plumbing would make sense. And vice versa.
I would say, however, that you should only go through the process of 301 redirecting existing URLs if you feel that the site is at a clear disadvantage because of the current URL structure. You can lose a little authority when you 301 one URL to another, and rankings can suffer / fluctuate as a result. Most go back to roughly where they were before, but this is not guaranteed. We generally advise avoiding 301s / URL changes unless it is undeniably necessary.
Cheers,
Jane
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
-
What is the problem with my site? Rankings are going down, not sure why.
Rankings for almost all the keywords are not improving and going down, not sure why. Can anyone please suggest me what's wrong with my site and what can i do to improve the overall performance of the site.I would really appreciate your help.
Reviews and Ratings | | Mr.Suren0 -
Local pack ranking anomaly -- help?
At a bit of a loss on this one... If anyone has any ideas about what's going on or how to tackle this, I'm all ears. One of my clients, an orthodontist, is appearing in the top three organic positions and in the local pack for almost all keywords we're targeting. However, for the keyword "orthodontist" without any location modifiers attached to it, we're appearing in the top three organic results but our Google listing is not appearing in the local pack. The three listings appearing in the local pack are his next-door competitor, one practice that closed almost a year ago, and a practice in two towns over. He and his competitor are the only two orthodontists in this town, so they should theoretically be the two main listings that are being pulled in. The listing for the closed practice is marked as closed on Google and has been reported to Google several times in the last few months. The listing has no website or reviews on it, although it does have an address and a phone number. We have spent months doing aggressive, in-depth NAP/local listing cleanups. We have 24 Google reviews with an average rating of 4.6 stars, and we're organically gathering reviews every week. We went through a site redesign at the beginning of this year, so we now have a mobile responsive website. We are appearing in the local pack for almost every other keyword that we have high organic rankings for, so we know it isn't necessarily an issue with our Google My Business listing. Does anyone have any ideas of what's going on, or what we can do to get our listing to appear in the local pack for this keyword? The keyword "orthodontist" is the single most important keyword to this client and our strategy, so we're open to any and all suggestions or thoughts.
Reviews and Ratings | | mothner0 -
Why does Google return 1 star reviews in local listings as the "most helpful"?
I have a client who has recently received two 1 star reviews on Google local (unhappy customer and unhappy customers boyfriend). This is affecting an otherwise flourishing business as these two 1 star reviews are displayed prominently when you search for the brand in Google. They have since received more positive reviews, however Google insists on displaying, what they term, the "most helpful" reviews first. Why are these 1 star reviews deemed "most helpful"? In all honesty, they aren't even really that helpful, with the latter verging on slanderous. We are in the process of reporting this one as it personally attacks a member of staff, however, whilst we tentatively wait weeks for a response, I wondered if anyone has any idea on how G decides which reviews are "most helpful"? When there is no option for other users to rate these reviews as helpful (such as on play store).
Reviews and Ratings | | Silkstream0 -
Sharing Facebook Comments Across Other Social Sites. Is It Okay?
A customer posted a nice review about our brand on her private FB page. My social monitoring tool found the review and sent me an alert. My question is if it is okay to re-purpose that review across other social channels, if the review was not specifically posted to my brand's FB timeline, but rather, discovered through listening tools.
Reviews and Ratings | | dsinger0 -
Google Places/Affiliate/Partner Site
Hello, We are looking at the possibility of renting or leasing a small office but we're not quite at that point yet. We would like to take add Google Places/G+ by adding an address & phone number giving us more real estate for the small Brand we are trying to build. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what we could add? Thanks in Advance!
Reviews and Ratings | | TP_Marketing0 -
Localized vs Professional Images
When it comes to local directory sites such as Google+ Local for business, Yelp, Bing places for business, etc., what is everyone's opinion on the type of images that should be used? I am trying to decide if I want to use 10 professionally produced images (the same 10 will be used across hundreds of locations under the same brand across the country) or if each location should use their own unique 10 images that show localized images from that exact location. When it comes to profile completeness, I think each site does not care, as long as they represent your company well. However, I am curious if there are any case studies or the like that show that one image type is better to use over the other in terms of helping customers make decisions to contact your business or not. really appreciate any comments you have to share.
Reviews and Ratings | | dsinger0 -
How to display reviews from review sites on your own website?
Is there a good way to display reviews that people have left on sites like Yelp, City Search, Google, etc on your own website without triggering duplicate content issues? It's hard to get reviews, so I'd like to make the most out of the ones that I get.
Reviews and Ratings | | atstickel0 -
Wondering best ways to optimize for google maps/local listing
I'm wondering if there is any strategy to optimize a client to show up in the local listings. I assume a lot of this is tied to Google + / Google Places for Business. Is it possible to have a company show up in the local listings over a certain geographic area even if they are not technically addressed in that area? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks, Dan H.
Reviews and Ratings | | higherimages0