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.
SEO impact of the anatomy of URL subdirectory structure?
-
I've been pushing hard to get our Americas site (DA 34) integrated with our higher domain authority (DA 51) international website. Currently our international website is setup in the following format...
The problem that I am facing is that I need my development framework installed in it's own directory. It cannot be at the root of the website (website.com) since that is where the other websites (us-en, fr-fr, etc.) are being generated from. Though we will have control of /us-en/ after the integration I cannot use that as the website main directory since the americas website is going to be designed for scalability (eventually adopting all regions and languages) so it cannot be region specific. What we're looking at is website.com/[base]/us-en. I'm afraid that if base has any length to it in terms of characters it is going to dilute the SEO value of whatever comes after it in the URL (website.com/[base]/us-en/store/product-name.html).
Any recommendations?
-
I see. In that case, sure, any short folder would be fine. Maybe even 'a' as it reads a little nice: website.com/a/us-en/store/product-name.html. Reads like, "Website, a US, English language store with the product named X." Someone seeing the link would have a pretty good idea of what it is going to be.
-
Length of url & number of folders have some importance (see also http://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls - point 6 & 11) but I don't think they are major ranking factors.
What is important however is the depth of the site (how many clicks needed to reach the content you are integrating) - As you are integrating a old site on in another domain - I would try to make sure that you have sufficient crosslinks between the part you are integrating & the existing content. If you only have 1 link from the home to the "integrated" site, you'll be moving the old content one step deeper in the structure, which might have a considerable impact on your ranking (I was unfortunate enough to experience it on one of my sites)
-
Thanks for the feedback Ryan. I may not have been very clear in my response - I know I was bouncing all over the place. usa cannot be my base URL for scalability reasons. Slowly we'll start adopting other countries websites so the top-level subdirectory needs to be broad enough to not restrict us to a specific part of the world.
My intitial thought is to opt for something like website.com/M/us-en or website.com/-/us-en where the base directory is short in hopes that it doesn't dilute the value of SEO terms later in the URL such as website.com/M/us-en/store/product-name.html. Is that something to worry about?
-
How about website.com/usa/en/ (instead of /us-en/)? Or you could use na for North America if that's your region.
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
-
Domain Masking SEO Impact
I hope I am explaining this correctly. If I need to provide any clarity please feel free to ask. We currently use a domain mask on an external platform that points back to our site. We are a non-profit and the external site allows users to create peer-to peer fundraisers that benefit our ministry. Currently we get many meta issues related to this site as well as broken links when fundraisers expire etc. We do not have a need to rank for the information from this site. Is there a way to index these pages so that they are not a part of the search engine site crawls as it relates to our site?
Technical SEO | | SamaritansPurse0 -
Word mentioned twice in URL? Bad for SEO?
Is a URL like the one below going to hurt SEO for this page? /healthcare-solutions/healthcare-identity-solutions/laboratory-management.html I like the match the URL and H1s as close as possible but in this case it looks a bit funky. /healthcare-solutions/healthcare-identity-solutions/laboratory-management.html
Technical SEO | | jsilapas0 -
JavaScript page loader - SEO impact
Hello all,
Technical SEO | | Lvet
I am working on a site that has a bizarre page load system. All pages get loaded trough the same Javascript snippet, for example: Changing the values in the form changes the page that is loaded. The most incredible thing is that, against my expectations, pages do get indexed by Google.
My question is: "Does loading pages dynamically using JavaScript affect the overall SEO performance?" Why are pages getting indexed? Thank you for shedding light on this.
Cheers
Luca0 -
Will removing the trailing slash impact my SEO?
Hi there, We have a company website based on Wordpress. I just noticed that under Settings > Permalinks I can configure the look of the URLs and even remove the trailing slash. We have about 2-300 pages online. If I remove the trailing slash now, will that negatively impact our SEO in anyway for existing pages? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Amr-Haffar0 -
Domain prefix changed, will this impact SEO?
Our web development team have changed our domain prefix from www to non www due to a server change. Our SSL certificate would not be recognised under www and would produce a substantial error message when visiting the secure parts of our website. To prevent issues with old links they have added a permanent 301 redirect from www. to non www. urls until our sitemap catches up. Would this impact our SEO efforts or would it have no impact as a redirect has been placed? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Jseddon920 -
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 -
Structuring URL's for better SEO
Hello, We were rolling our fresh urls for our new service website. Currently we have our structure as www.practo.com/health/dental/clinic/bangalore We like to have it as www.practo.com/health/dental-clinic-bangalore Can someone advice us better which one of the above structure would work out better and why? Should this be a focus of attention while going ahead since this is like a search engine platform for patients looking out for actual doctors. Thanks, Aditya
Technical SEO | | shanky10 -
Iframes & SEO
I've got a client that wants a site with all content in iFrames. They saw another site they liked & asked if we could do it. Of course we can technically. How big a negative hit would they take with SEO? Is there anything we can do to mitigate it, such as redirects, etc? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | wcksmith0