Question about web site structure
-
Is there an SEO advantage for individual pages to be in sub folders vs not being in a folder? Of course site managemnt is easier with folders if you have 100;s of pages...clearly a shorter URL is easier for humans to naviagte.
vs.
-
I'm not sure I understand your question John, and the second URL is a 404. Could you expand your question a bit? Thanks!
-
Hi Keri and community,
So is it a link juice mistake on my site
www.shearerpainting.com/recyclepaint.index
I created the sub folder and landing page specifically for a new campaign "recycle paint" with video and content and links
-
I've gone ahead and marked this thread as answered, even though we haven't heard from John. Thanks for your great recap!
-
Hi John. I'm surprised this question isn't considered answered yet as the group seems to touch on all the bases. Here's a recap:
- Richard Getz highlights the ability to add keywords via folders but cautions against adding too many folders (historically due to crawling issues).
- David Lenehan cautions against too many folders causing duplicate content issues and ungainly website architecture.
- Keri Morgret highlights the usefulness of folders in Analytics to help track specific portions of content. The moz also discusses this in their excellent post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-powerful-analytics-tip-every-website-should-employ
"By segmenting out traffic to URLs that include /blog/ and those that include /ugc/ (YOUmoz), we can see when/where/how each section is rising or falling in traffic and contributing to the overall site's performance."
- Fatwallet cautions against spam negating benefits in either and emphasizes linking as driving more value regardless.
- Aaron Dicks recommends a CMS to give you strength and flexibility in organizing your content.
- While Pashmina reminds us of the usefulness of redirects when curtailing duplicate content or sending lost link strength to a page in greater need.
And finally since you were asking about domain\folder\page vs domain\page you're not going to run into subdomain issues. If a short folder category makes since in analytics it's definitely worth it. Just look at the URL above... we're in the 'q' folder. Hope that helps.
-
John,
Did any of these responses answer your question, or do you still have more questions? If you could add a comment or mark a helpful response, that'd be great!
-
There are a lot of answers on here with regards to .html files and folders. The most efficient and easily-manageable solution here is to migrate to a good Content Management System that can handle categorys and page parents (I prefer Wordpress)
Products can be categorised one or two deep (suggested max for Search Engines) and URL's will reflect the product description. I.e is the item is a widget or type foo, being in url www.example.com/foo/widget/product-name would be a great structure, as both foo and widget might be part of the search term for the product, and they will also appear on the product page naturally as you describe the product.
This also helps the Keyword cannibalisation problem, as you will be able to see through administration that there are multiple pages doing the same thing.
Essentially in answer to your question, go one or two deep if it will help your users. Don't go more than 2 as Search Engines may not crawl that far if you have a young/non-authorative domain.
Hope this helps,
Aaron
-
I am gonna vote up with 1 folder level. There is no evidence of it, but its possibly that the juice would not pass through as well if there are many directories/sub-directories
-
I agree with Richard and Joel. No more than 3 levels deep for categories. And I'd like to add, that it's good to create redirects for alternative categories or links. If a product can belong to 2 sub categories, have both links work. eg. domain.com/category/subcategory-primary/product.html -> would be main link domain.com/category/subcategory-secondary/product.html -> would redirect to above And while this is not necessarily an SEO advantage, having clean, short and organized categories helps create a good user experience and easy way finding for your users and leads to higher conversion rates.
-
That's a really good point.
I'm glad GA form fields accept regular expressions
-
Don't overlook the usefulness of folders when it comes to Google Analytics. Lunametrics has a post on designing a site that is friendly with GA at http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2010/09/22/designing-google-analytics-friendly-site/.
-
Google is going to trust your link structure more than the subdirectories in the url.
Make your urls clean, try to get a good keyword in there, but DON'T stuff and make them obnoxious and spammy.
There IS typically an advantage to a flatter architecture, but if the content is rich and the longer tail potential is high a deeper architecture will serve just fine.
-
Too many sub folders isn't good for SEO and you can have problems with duplicate content. Personally I would go with the first option. I try to ensure products have the following URL structure
store.com/product-laser-gadget.html
You need to avoid the following situation;
store.com/gadget/product-laser-gadget.html
-
Thanks Joel can you give me an example?
www.donuts/glazed/chocalate glazed
-
If Susan does not get you some backlinks, nothing will
-
Richard you are going to laugh...so I just made a new video and added sitemap, and I am jacked up about getting another keyword in so i made
http://www.shearerpainting.com/PaintColors/susanmarinello.php
but my HTML is so poori cant figure out menu's page architecture, blah , blah so I tempoarily put this up:
-
None that I can think of.
If you have categories, it not only allows the use of another keyword, but you get to make a landing page for that keyword. domain.com/category/index.php would be used for keywords and also redirecting link juice once a product was deleted as explained here: (scroll to the bottom)
http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-do-you-do-about-links-to-constantly-moving-pages
When you link build, you can use these landing pages to point links to. Also good for link baiting.
There are several reasons to have these types of pages. It would depend on what your site is composed of, but you can add videos, how-tos, related blog post, etc.
All of which get a user in a direction, attract links, and help get link juice to deeper pages.
-
Thanks Richard, Is there any advantge to have all my pages only go 1 deep?
-
Sure, the most obvious is the use of a keyword, but don't go more than 3 deep. domain.com/category1/category2/product.html
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
-
Best way to Load Responsive Images for Responsive Site?
Hello All, Can anyone suggest be best technique to load responsive images? We are developing responsive site so looking for good ideas from your side so that it load very fast. Thanks!
Web Design | | micey1230 -
Ecommerce web design read more toggle vs menu link on home page and product pages
Hello, We have an Ecommerce store. We have a lot of content on the home page and product pages and we are going back and forth between which one to use between a toggle "Read More" "Show Less" toggle for each section and a anchor linked menu. We have long product pages We're thinking a read more toggle is more appropriate for category descriptions so that they can go at the top of the category and not take up space. But the read more toggle with lots of content scrolls the page down and doesn't scroll it back up when you hit "show less" We're leaning towards a linked menu for the home pages and product pages for this reason, but an accordion type set of toggles would look nicer. What do you recommend, and how have you set up your read more toggles if they have lots of info so that they are not confusing? Are there other options? ' Not looking for code (I can do that) I'm looking for ideas on the cleanest home page, category pages, and product pages when they have tons and tons of textual content. Wanting to trim it up and make it look compact and neat! Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
Is it okay to design different mobile site for different browsers
Hi, Is it okay to design different mobile site for different browsers on same url. The content of the site will also be different on different browsers. Will it be treated as black hat by Google. The mobile site & desktop site has same url across devices & browsers. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
Can someone please help with technical question!
I have noticed that our website tool to get a quote does not work with active scripting disabled is this bad? How many people have this disabled?
Web Design | | BobAnderson0 -
Web Designer Needed
So I feel like I've almost convinced my boss to hire out a re-design for our website (which is SORELY needed.) I'm at the step where I need to start finding quotes and site builders. I want a responsive design site built modern and professional... Love the moz site but not responsive enough. My current favorite example is at www.hasoffers.com Does anybody have any suggestions of where to go? And as a bonus, if anybody is brave enough to ballpark what a site like this would cost that would be awesome. Doesn't have to be exact or even that close... Thanks for any advice given.
Web Design | | jesse-landry0 -
Can the website pages have the site name like Title of the page | Sitename.com
Hi, Can the website pages have the site name like Title of the page | Sitename.com I have a site with 50K pages and all pages have | Sitename.com mentioned would that be a good practice or bad? Thanks Martin
Web Design | | mtthompsons0 -
Homepage Title Question? Multi-Keywords or All Encompassing Keyword
Okay so I am currently redesigning my company's webpage. I am making it responsive and giving it a more up to date look with newer features, etc. A facelift, basically. While updating the site i'm also doing some on-page optimization here and there, and am curious about the page title for my homepage. My company offers video production, web development & design, and web marketing. While we do offer each service individually, we are really trying to sell the combination of all three services to our clients and show them how they can work together effectively. Now my question is, in my homepage title, should i list each service offering keyword (which is what i do now) like this : "Video Production - Web Design - Web Marketing • Company Name" Or, should i try to find one keyword that kind of sums up what we do, like this: "Magic All-Encompassing Keyword • Company Name" I'm thinking that since three sort of unrelated keywords are in the page title, it may be viewed as over-optimizing and we won't see as good of results as just focusing on one keyword, which leads me to think that i should try to sum all of our services into one "all-encompassing" keyword such as "media production", which isn't the best choice, i'm just throwing it out there for the sake of this discussion. Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Web Design | | RenderPerfect0 -
Best way to set up a site with multiple brick and mortor locations across Canada
I have a client who is expanding his business locations from 2 cities to 3, and working towards having 10+ locations across Canada. Right now we're building location based landing pages for each city, as well as keyword targeted landing pages for each city. For example, landing pages for "Vancouver whatever clinic" and "Calgary whatever clinic" as well as for "Vancouver specific service", and "Calgary specific service". This means a lot of landing pages will need to be created to target each of 10 or so desirable "service" keywords for each city's location. I've no issue with this, however I was wondering how other companies go about this? What's the best way to be relevant for certain "service" based keyword searches in each city? Many of the "service" keywords are 'localized' meaning they will show Google Places results for local brick and mortar businesses for each location. I'm quite good at optimizing locally for this type of thing. However, many of the "service" keywords are not yet 'localized' by Google, I'd want to have my client webpages show well in the SERP's. for these 'non-localized' "service keywords" as well. the new site will be built in WordPress
Web Design | | AndyKuiper0