URL structure - Page Path vs No Page Path

[Ashcastle]

We are currently re building our URL structure for eccomerce websites.

We have seen a lot of site removing the page path on product pages e.g. https://www.theiconic.co.nz/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html versus what would normally be https://www.theiconic.co.nz/womens-clothing-tops/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html

Should we be removing the site page path for a product page to keep the url shorter or should we keep it? I can see that we would loose the hierarchy juice to a product page but not sure what is the right thing to do.

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Thanks, Nigel I really appreciate your comment

Regards

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Roman,

I work with a lot of e-commerce companies and I have to say from one SEO to another this is great advice!

Best Regards

Nigel

[Roman-Delcarmen]

First, let me tell you that a SEO-friendly URL differs per type of website. There are a few ground rules, but I strongly encourage you to keep the visitor in mind when setting up your URL structure.

No matter what kind of website you have, there are a couple of ground rules that apply to all websites.

• The main thing to keep in mind is that your URLs should be focused. Strip your URLs of stop words like ‘a’, ‘of’, ‘the’ etc. In 99% of the cases, these words add nothing of value to your URL. If possible, strip your URLs of verbs as well. Words like ‘are’ or ‘have’ are not needed in your URL to make clear what the page is about.
• The length of your URL isn’t really a factor in this. We do recommend to keep your URLs as short as possible. It’s not that Google doesn’t like lengthy URLs, but shorter URLs are most probably more focused. Keep in mind that if you use breadcrumbs on your site, as we do, these could appear instead of the full URL:
• Length isn’t that much of an issue: Google will show what they think is important for that visitor. Keep in mind that meta titles and descriptions are cut off at 512 pixels, and so is your URL.

SEO-friendly URLs for your company website
If your website holds information about your company and/or services and that is basically it, no matter how many pages you have, I’d go with the shortest URL possible.

• _http://example.com/contact/_
• _http://example.com/about-us/_

SEO-friendly URLs for your online shop
If your website is an online shop, there are two ways to go about:

• _http://example.com/product-name/_
• _http://example.com/category-name/product-name/_

Some content management systems (like Magento) create both. In that case, use rel=”canonical” to point Google to the one you want to appear in Google.

The question remains what URL structure to use. In this case, SEO-friendly URLs should also be helpful URLs for your visitor. If your shop contains categories that make your visitor’s life easier, by all means, include these categories in your URL as well. That way your URL, breadcrumbs, and menu will remind the visitor where they are on your website:

• _http://example.com/birds/crane_
• _http://example.com/equipment/crane_

See what I mean? Decide for yourself if your categories add that value to the product and URL. If so, it’s also better for SEO to include the category, as category and product are very much related.

SEO-friendly URLs for your blog or news site
If your website is a blog or news website, there are a number of ways to construct your URL.

• _http://example.com/post-title/_
• _http://example.com/category-name/post-title/_
• _http://example.com/mm/dd/yyyy/post-title/_

Let's define your question, you are talking about URL structure and the best way to implement it. That means that the main topic of your question is your site-structure.

Let's take 2 examples

• Backlinko
• Yoast

Both are successful websites with different approaches

Backlinko has 50 or 60 pages so Brian Deans put emphasis on short URLs and the structure is very simple www.website.com/keyword/

Yoast, on the other hand, put emphasis on the taxonomy www.website.com/category/sub-category/single-page

There are two main reasons why you should focus on optimizing your
category page:

1 Category archives are landing pages
Your category archives are more important than individual pages and posts. Those archives should be the first result in the search engines. That means those archives are your most important landing pages. Thus, they should also provide the best user experience. The more likely your individual pages are to expire, the more this is true. In a shop, your products might change, making your categories more important to optimize. Otherwise, you’d be optimizing pages that
are going to be gone a few weeks/months later.

2 Categories prevent individual pages from competing
If you sell boxers and you optimize every product page, all those pages will compete for the term ‘boxers’. You should optimize them for their specific brand and model, and link them all to the ‘boxers’ category page. That way the category page can rank for ‘boxer’, while the product page can rank for more specific terms. This way, the
category page prevents the individual pages from competing.

[aarongray]

For me, I work it like this. if it is not hurting my rankings or user experience I would not change it. the risk is pretty high if it's not done right and I don't think you will gain enough out of it to take the risk.

Are you wanting to change it because you feel it will help with rankings?