Link Structure June 2019
-
Question Which link structure is better in 2019 for best SEO practice
Example A) https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/soft-plastic-lures/
Or B) https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/fishing/fishing-lures/soft-plastic-lures/
We're on the bigcommerce platform and used to have
https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/categories/soft-plastic-lures/
Last year we went from bigcommerce long URL to short to bypass the link juice being sent to /categories
Now we have an SEO company trying to sell me their services after a bit of a steady decline since september 2018 and told me that we should have link structure as example B and that is likely the reason for the dip.. Due to breadcrumbing, True or False?
I explained i had bread crumb like shown in https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/berkley-powerbait-t-tail-minnow/ buy the SEO guy said no it needs to be in the URL structure too.I was under the impression that Short urls opposed to long was better these days and link juice is passed better if it is short url direct to the point? Am i wrong?
-
We agree with Gaston. Our experience is that it almost is never worth the time to change URL structures on an established site. Instead, focus time and effort on creating more and better content, adding more internal links, and doing legit link building.
For example, we looked at this blog post, https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/blog/chasebaits-lure-range/, where you highlight four separate lures but you only link to one of the product pages instead of all four. Furthermore, you linked only once using a "Shop Now" button. We'd recommend adding another link to that product page linking the text of the name of the product somewhere above the "Shop Now" button within the content talking about that specific lure.
-
Hi Ben,
Short answer: URL structure has too small of an impact on Google rankings.
Long answer:
I work in XXXL e-commerce and had similar discussions and eventually tested different approaches. We saw no gain in rankings nor in impressions.
Also, hired some of the world best agencies and consultants to help us out. They came to the same conclusion. We cannot argue the data of our experiments.- Tested in different categories and in different countries.
There is also, the discussion that having a shorter URL helps in rankings has been addressed by John Mueller in some Google Webmaster Hangouts (currently can't find it), he said that it makes little to no difference. Instead of focusing on changing your internal systems and structures, use that energy and resources to improve user experience and content on the site.
There is a great possibility that your decline in Google traffic is due to other deeper issues. I'd suggest you and your team focus more on competitive analysis and trends on user behavior that trying to change the whole website URL structure.
A neat tip that I've sometimes been given is, check your internal linking. You might probably be linking too much or too little to your best pages.As you may imagine, this is not a simple issue. There is no clear actionable and probably just one change won't revert that steady decline.
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston
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
-
Internal links to landing pages
Hi, we are in the process of building a new website and we have 12 different locations and for theses 12 locations we have landing pages with unique copy on the following: 1. Marketing...2 SEO....3. PPC....4. Web Design Therefor there are 48 landing pages. The marketing pages are the most important ones to us in terms of traffic and priority. My question is: 1. Should we put a dropdown of the are pages in the main header under locations that link to the area marketing pages? 2. What is the best way to link all the sub pages such as London Web Design? Should these links just be coming off the London marketing page? or should we have a sitemap in the footer that lists every page? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
HTTPs to HTTP Links
Hi Mozers, I have a question about the news that Google Chrome will start blocking mixed content starting in December 2019. That starting in December 2019, users that are presented insecure content will be presented a toggle allowing those Chrome users to unblock the insure resources that Chrome is blocking. And in January 2020, Google will remove that toggle option an will just start blocking mixed content or insecure web pages. Not sure what this means. What are the implications of this for a HTTPS page that has an HTTP link? Thanks, Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
Re: Inbound Links. Whether it's HTTP or HTTPS, does it still go towards the same inbound link count?
Re: Inbound Links. If another website links to my website, does it make a difference to my inbound link count if they use http or https? Basically, my site http://mysite.com redirects to https://mysite.com, so if another website uses the link http://mysite.com, will https://mysite.com still benefit from the inbound links count? I'm unsure if I should reach out to all my inbound links to tell them to use my https URL instead...which would be rather time consuming so just checking http and https counts all the same. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | premieresales0 -
Links: Links come from bizzare pages
Hi all, My question is related to links that I saw in Google Search Console. While looking at who is linking to my site, I saw that GSC has some links that are coming from third party websites but these third party webpages are not indexed and not even put up by their owners. It looks like the owner never created these pages, these pages are not indexed (when you do a site: search in Google) but the URL of these pages loads content in the browser. Example - www.samplesite1.com/fakefolder/fakeurl what exactly is this thing? To mention more details, the third party website in question is a Wordpress website and I guess is probably hijacked. But how does one even get these types pages/URLs up and running on someone else's website and then link out to other websites. I am concerned as the content that I am getting link from is adult content and I will have to do some link cleansing soon.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
Removing Bad Links
Hi all, I am in the process of conducting a Link Audit and I am faced with quite a lot of seemingly poor quality examples, such as; http://gotogetaways.com/tag/cunard/ http://jobhiringlocalandabroad.blogspot.com/p/job-hiring-for-cruise-liner-orchestra.html http://lumukixu.xlx.pl/p-o-cruises-aurora.php To me these should be removed \ disavowed but I am getting a little resistence from stakeholders regarding the amount of links I am seeking to rid ourselves of - all are of a similar quality to my examples above... Just so that I know that I am not being 'over eager' with my audit, I welcome your opinions Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Linking and non-linking root domains
Hi, Is there any affect on SEO based on the ratio of linking root domains to non-linking root domains and if so what is the affect? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
Link wheel still working ?
Hi members, Is link wheel still working for getting better SERPs and getting good backlinks, ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | purplar0 -
Internal Site Structure Question (URL Formation and Internal Link Design)
Hi, I have an e-commerce website that has an articles section: There is an articles.aspx file that can be reached from the top menu and it holds links to all of the articles as follows: xxx.com/articles/article1.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
xxx.com/articles/article2.aspx I want to add several new articles under a new sections, for example a complete set of articles under the title of "buying guide" and the question is what would be the best way? I was thinking of adding a "computers-buying-guides.aspx" accessible from the top menu / footer and from it linking to: xxx.com/computer-buying-ghudes/what-to-check-prior-to-buying-a-laptop.aspx
xxx.com/computer-buying-ghudes/weight-vs-performance.aspx
etc. Any thoughts / recommendations? Thanks0