How to set up internal linking with subcategories?
-
I'm building a new website and am setting up internal link structure with subcategories and hoping to do so with best Seo practices in mind. When linking to a subcategory's main page, would I make the internal link www.xxx.com/fishing/ or www.xxx.com/fishing/index.html or does it matter? I'm just trying to avoid duplicate content I guess, if Google saw each page as a separate page. Any other cautions when using subdirectories in my navigation?
-
It seems like you are actually asking 2 questions in one. Let's approach them both separately.
Should you include index.html or not in your structure? Personally, I think the cleanest URL structure works the best. Get rid of any URL parameters that do not offer any benefit. Cleaner URLs not only look better, but are easier to read and share. Who really wants to share DOMAIN.com/fishing.index.html vs DOMAIN.com/fishing. It may seem petty, but in the grander scheme of things it will just work better. If you do this in one area of your site, keep it consistant through the whole site
As to making sure that Google only indexes one version, this can be done through the URL parameter redirects on your server. You can create rules where the URL automatically strips out any additional URL items, and redirects to the proper version. Once you create your sitemap, make sure to only include the versions of your URL you want indexed. One thing I have found in my entire SEO career is this: The easier and clearer you paint a picture for Google about your site, the better your results will be.
-
Hello,
Duplicate content is usually pretty simple to deal with see Sheena's response.
I would recommend at this point in design looking at the URL structure not primary as trying to avoid a negative, rather how to incorporate the most positives. That is how can you get the most SEO value out of the url's. Since you're at the point where you can make these changes, then now is the time to evaluate how you want your site to appear to the users and search engines.
Here are 2 Good, nay VERY GOOD post on Moz to help with this process.
1. Moz: Guide To SEO Chapter 4
2. Dr Pete: Anatomy Of A URLI hope this is helpful,
Don
-
First thing you need to do is determine which is your preferred URL (probably www.site.com/fishing/). Once you have that, the key to good linking is consistency (using the same, preferred URL for any given page you're linking to & also using descriptive, naturally-occurring anchor text that's relevant to the page's content).
The fact that your site has other versions of the page (/fishing/ and /fishing/index.html) means that you probably need to implement a solution to prevent dup content issues - either 301 redirect all variations to the preferred URL or implement rel=canonical tags to tell search bots which is the preferred URL to include in its index. You can read more about this here:
I hope this helps!
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
-
Helping finding a link
Hi So Ive done a crawl of the site using screaming frog. There are a few old category and sub category pages which don't exist any more but somehow the crawler is finding them. An example is below: http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Home-Appliances/cat/Health-&-Beauty/subcat/Male-Grooming Just wondering if anybody had any ideas about how I could go and find these urls and remove them off the site. Any ideas would be really appreciated. Thanks Andy
Technical SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Unnatural links from your site
Hi, 24 February got this penalty message in Google webmaster tool. Google detected a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative outbound links on pages on this site. This may be the result of selling links that pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. Already removed all the link on the blog and sent reconsideration request to Google spam team. But request is rejected. Please help me on this or share link with me on same case. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Confused on footer links (Which are best practices for footer links on other websites?)
Hello folks, We are eCommerce web design and Development Company and we give do follow links of our website to every projects which we have done with specific keywords. So now the concern is we are seeing huge amount of back-links are being generated from single root domain for particular keyword in webmaster tools. So what should be the best way to practice this? Should we give no follow attribute to it or can use our company logo with link? LtMjHER.png
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
International Seo - Canada
Our organization is currently only operating in the USA but will soon be entering the Canadian market. We did a lot of research and decided that for our needs it would be best to use a subfolder for Canada. Initially we will be targeting the english speaking community but eventually we will want to expand to the french speaking Canadians as well. The question is - is there a preferred version in setting up the subfolders: www.website.org/ca/ -- default will be english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french www.website.org/en-ca/ - english www.website.org/fr-ca/ - french www.website.org/ca/en/ -english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french Thanks
Technical SEO | | Morris770 -
Ranking Internationally
Whats the best URL strategy to rank for one term in different countries? We currently rank well in Australia, but are tackling many countries over the next few months. The page I am ranking is http://www.spendbitcoins.com/buy for the term 'buy bitcoins' or 'buy bitcoins in Australia' (replace Australia with each specific country, i.e. New Zealand, Japan, etc.) These are the strategies I have come up with, is one of these good or is there a different better way? Use country specific TLDs, pulling the content from the same site w/ translations Use country specific TLDs and create separate sites and create completely original content Use country specific TLDs, forwarding to the primary domain use a subdomain from the same site modify the page link to be something like spendbitcoins.com/buy/new-zealand Don't worry about any of this and just get links from sites with the proper TLD
Technical SEO | | jaychristopher0 -
Forum Profile Links
Are they really important? Many preach they are, and there are tonnes of services out there who give you thousands of forum profile links in no time. I strictly believe in genuine links built the hard way, and definitely don't want to get into anything which is black hat. Please suggest if building several Forum Profile Links is an appropriate way of building links?
Technical SEO | | KS__2 -
How Does Link Juice Pass?
Say there is a link on an authoritative site to my site, and the link points to www.mysite.com. However, I have set all URL variations (https://mysite.com, www.mysite.com, mysite.com, etc.) to redirect to http://mysite.com automatically. Does the link juice from this authoritative site pass through the www.mysite.com URL to http://mysite.com automatically due to the automatic redirect? I guess my question is does the link juice automatically pass on to the destination URL, even though it is not the original URL the authoritative site pointed to?
Technical SEO | | NiallTom0 -
Link Building Advice
Hi Everyone, I have just joined the community and am looking for some help regards Offsite SEO and Link Building. I have done some basic SEO on my website 'Marketing Quotes' Added to web directories (although I am told they do not carry much weight) I have written content and articles around them (on ezine, squidoo etc.) I have written unique content for the site I have done guest posting on blogs Not sure what to do next though for high power links. I did notice a Q&A on contacting webmasters and asking for links (after building a relationship) but wondered if there was anything (offsite wise) that I have missed out? Appreciate any advice. Regards, David
Technical SEO | | Marketingquotes0