Ecommerce Site Structure -- "/our_locations" page: helpful or harmful?
-
Hello!
We are a retailer with brick and mortar stores in different cities. We have a website (ourbusiness.com), which includes
- a blog (ourbusiness.com/blog) and
- a separate ecommerce site for each store in subfolders (ourbusiness.com/Boston-store and ourbusiness.com/Atlanta-store).
- NB: We do this for non-business reasons and have no choice.
So, this is not like REI (for example) or other stores with lots of locations but one central ecommerce operation.
Most experts seem to recommend a site structure that echoes REIs. IE:
- a home page principally devoted to ecommerce (rei.com)
- includes an Our Locations-type page (rei.com/stores) which links to local store pages like
- (rei.com/stores/fresno)
I understand how this would help REI, since their homepage is devoted to ecommerce and they need a store locator page that doesn't compete with the shopping experience. But since we can't send people to products directly from our home page, is there any reason for us not to put the store locator function right on the home page?
That is, is there any reason in our case to prefer (A) ourbusiness.com/our_locations/Boston_store over (B) ourbusiness.com/Boston-store?
As i see it, the extra page (/our_locations/) could actually hurt, as it puts products one click further away from customers, and one link deeper for bots.
On the other hand, it may make the multi-store structure clearer to bots (and maybe people) and help us in local search.
Finally, would it make a difference if there were 10 stores vs 2?
Thanks for any thoughts!
-
Hi there!
I do not have any resource or study for those statements.
- for the extra clic, it a well known fact that, for any extra clic that the user does, the conversion rate decreases.
- On how usefull is that landing hub, it is something to be experimented in your case. Theoretically it helps, but its really difficult to estimate how much.
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR -
Thanks for the response. I think you boiled it down to the basic questions very nicely.
If you have any research you can point me to to help me understand just how useful the extra page might be to google bot, or (on the other hand) how much traffic we may lose to the extra click, i'd be most grateful for a pointer.
thanks again!
-
Hi there,
On one hand, my opinion, its a little helpful to GoogleBot, having that folder stating that you have several stores.
So I'd go with A: ourbusiness.com/stores/locationOn the other hand, there is no need to increase an extra click to users, all links could be directly to the stores and not making the users to choose. Also, that extra folder, could be used as an internal link page (also called, landing HUB) were you link all your stores. This would also help a little to GoogleBot.
On a third hand, there is no way to forecast how much your traffic will improve. So analyze and take into consideration how much time and effort you and your dev team need for this improvement.
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Do old backlinks still help with new URL with 301 redirect? Also I added the www. How does this affect it all?
I changed my URL from exampledetailing. com to exampleautodetailing. com. It is redirected with a 301. Also, it is on Squarespace AND I opted to add the www. So will the old backlinks of exampledetailing. com still help the new URL exampleautodetailing. com or do I need to try and update all the links? Also, future links, do I need to include the www. or just the root domain of exampleautodetailing. com or even the whole https://wwwexampleautodetailing. com? I believe the www is considered a sub domain and a new entity on Google, so I am not sure how that works. Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Rmarkjr810 -
Meta descriptions in other languages than the page's content?
Hi guys, I need an opinion on the optimization of meta descriptions for a website available in 6 languages that faces the following situation: Main pages are translated in 6 languages, English being primary >> all clear here. BUT The News section includes articles only in English, that are displayed as such on all other language versions of the website. Example:
Local Website Optimization | | Andreea-M
website.com/en/news/article 1
website.com/de/neues/article 1
website.com/fr/nouvelles/article 1
etc. Because we don't have the budget right now to translate all content, I was wondering if I could add only the Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions in the specific languages (using Google Translate), while the content to remain in English. Would this be accepted as reasonable enough for Google, or would it affect the website ranking?
I'd like to avoid major mistakes, so I'm hoping someone here on this forum has a better idea of how to proceed in this case.0 -
Are core pages considered "cornerstones"?
To check that I understand the terminology, "cornerstone articles" are posts (or pages) that have some extensive, detailed, important information about a subject that other blog posts and articles can link to in reference, right? For example, a website for an auto repair shop might have a blog post about what cold weather does to a car's transmission and that post could link to a cornerstone "explainer" article that goes into more detail explaining to car-dummies like me what a transmission even DOES. But are core pages also in this category of cornerstone content? Or are they something entirely different and should be constructed accordingly? By "core pages", I mean the base-level pages about what your business is and does. For the repair shop example, I mean things like an "About Us" page or a "Services" page*. *or broken up into individual pages listing the services related to brakes, engine, wheels, etc. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | BrianAlpert780 -
What is the effect of CloudFlare CDN on page load speeds, hosting IP location and the ultimate SEO effect?
Will using a CDN like CloudFlare.com confuse search engines in terms of the location (IP address) of where the site is actually physically hosted especially since CloudFlare distributes the site's content all around the globe? I understand it is important that if customers are mostly in a particular city it makes sense to host on an IP address in the same city for better rankings, all things else being equal? I have a number of city-based sites but does it make having multiple hosting plans in multiple cities/ countries (to be close to customers) become suddenly a ridiculous thing with a CDN? In other words should I just reduce it down to having one hosting plan anywhere and just use the CDN to distribute it? I am really struggling with this concept trying to understand if I should consolidate all my hosting plans under one, or if I should get rid of CloudFlare entirely (can it cause latency in come cases) and create even more locally-based hosting plans (like under site5.com who allow many city hosting plans). I really hope you can help me somehow or point me to an expert who can clarify this confusing conundrum. Of course my overall goal is to have:
Local Website Optimization | | uworlds
1. lowest page load times
2. best UX
3. best rankings I do realise that other concepts are more important for rankings (great content, and links etc.) but assuming that is already in place and every other factor is equal, how can I fine tune the hosting to achieve the desirable goals above? Many thanks!
Mark0 -
.com vs .com/language ?
Hello Moooooooooz ! We're currently working on a new website http://www.globalmetal.fr/ which deep SEO issues. The problematic is as always in this case: 1 company + different subsidiaries + different markets + different languages The companies is handling different domains: http://www.globalmetal.fr/
Local Website Optimization | | JoomGeek
www.globalmetalbroker.ch
www.globalmetalbroker.com
and so on. Until recently I was totally convinced (there is no magic solution I know) that it was better for a SME to focus on 1 domain (.com) and get the other websites per language .com/fr .com/es etc. But in their case their TLD is pretty new: www.globalmetalbroker.com (DA 1) vs globalmetal.fr (DA 15) So I'm wondering: 1- Does Google know understand that globalmetal.fr is the french website of globalmetalbroker.com (maybe via webmaster tool) ?
2- Does it make senss to move all the (new) language websites into .com/[folders] and once the .com DA is doing better redirecting the .fr to.com/fr ?
3- Is it better to focus on .com .fr (but french speakers are not just in france) .ru and so on or to keep the .com/[languages] Hope someone got the same issue recently 😛0 -
Need Help: Trouble With Website and Analytics
Hey all, I have a client who I have been having the WORST time getting traffic and ranked for relevant keywords. I've tried so many things and have yet to see much progress after about 9 months. Site is mgmcdallas.com. I realized something REALLYY weird with this site a couple weeks ago. The business has a Dallas, TX address and really only services the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area. They recently started getting some of referral traffic from yelp.com/biz_redir. Weirdly, they've also been getting more sales calls and more salespeople filling out their contact form. Take January for example, they had 164 sessions and 119 of those were from this yelp referral. They DON'T advertise with Yelp, or get traffic from Yelp anywhere in Texas. You can see from below screenshot that they are all coming from California. analytics I've had our <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> and developer look into and we can't figure out what's happening. Any thoughts? iubnZdu
Local Website Optimization | | BWrightTLM0 -
Page Title for a Local Shop
Hello everyone 🙂 I would like to have your opinion on one thing: I am working on a local shop selling pottery and other things. So I was thinking, would it make sense to title the page something like: “Pottery Object, San Francisco, Awesome Pottery” which means “keyword, location, company name”? Or is there a better way to optimize the title of the page for a local shop? Thank you very (very) much 🙂
Local Website Optimization | | Franco19780 -
Localize Homepage, or service pages?
Hi so I am curious if a homepage may carry the most link juice, then if you service an entire state, do you include the state name as a keyword in your homepage title to get noticed, or the company brand, resulting in adding service area pages to cater to unique each city that you service? I am just not sure if Google is smart enough to know you service a state? I have my local page with a service area, but is this all I need? So I would not need to add a state name. Like I build horse barns, pole barns, metal buildings, and indoor riding arenas. So I am curious if you would do a title tag like Colorado Builders - Barns, Buildings, and Arenas Or maybe Colorado at the end? Or not at all Thanks for any tips.
Local Website Optimization | | asbchris0