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.
How to set up internal linking with subcategories?
-
I'm building a new website and am setting up internal link structure with subcategories and hoping to do so with best Seo practices in mind. When linking to a subcategory's main page, would I make the internal link www.xxx.com/fishing/ or www.xxx.com/fishing/index.html or does it matter? I'm just trying to avoid duplicate content I guess, if Google saw each page as a separate page. Any other cautions when using subdirectories in my navigation?
-
It seems like you are actually asking 2 questions in one. Let's approach them both separately.
Should you include index.html or not in your structure? Personally, I think the cleanest URL structure works the best. Get rid of any URL parameters that do not offer any benefit. Cleaner URLs not only look better, but are easier to read and share. Who really wants to share DOMAIN.com/fishing.index.html vs DOMAIN.com/fishing. It may seem petty, but in the grander scheme of things it will just work better. If you do this in one area of your site, keep it consistant through the whole site
As to making sure that Google only indexes one version, this can be done through the URL parameter redirects on your server. You can create rules where the URL automatically strips out any additional URL items, and redirects to the proper version. Once you create your sitemap, make sure to only include the versions of your URL you want indexed. One thing I have found in my entire SEO career is this: The easier and clearer you paint a picture for Google about your site, the better your results will be.
-
Hello,
Duplicate content is usually pretty simple to deal with see Sheena's response.
I would recommend at this point in design looking at the URL structure not primary as trying to avoid a negative, rather how to incorporate the most positives. That is how can you get the most SEO value out of the url's. Since you're at the point where you can make these changes, then now is the time to evaluate how you want your site to appear to the users and search engines.
Here are 2 Good, nay VERY GOOD post on Moz to help with this process.
1. Moz: Guide To SEO Chapter 4
2. Dr Pete: Anatomy Of A URLI hope this is helpful,
Don
-
First thing you need to do is determine which is your preferred URL (probably www.site.com/fishing/). Once you have that, the key to good linking is consistency (using the same, preferred URL for any given page you're linking to & also using descriptive, naturally-occurring anchor text that's relevant to the page's content).
The fact that your site has other versions of the page (/fishing/ and /fishing/index.html) means that you probably need to implement a solution to prevent dup content issues - either 301 redirect all variations to the preferred URL or implement rel=canonical tags to tell search bots which is the preferred URL to include in its index. You can read more about this here:
- http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/duplicate-content
- http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/canonicalization
I hope this helps!
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
-
Can I set a canonical tag to an anchor link?
I have a client who is moving to a one page website design. So, content from the inner pages is being condensed in to sections on the 'home' page. There will be a navigation that anchor links to each relevant section. I am wondering if I should leave the old pages and use rel=canonical to point them to their relevant sections on the new 'home' page rather than 301 them. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Vizergy0 -
Is there a limit to Internal Redirect?
I know Google says there is no limit to it but I have seen on many websites that too many 301 redirects can be a problem and might negatively affect your rankings in SERPs. I wanted to know especially from people who worked on large ecommerce site. How do they manage internal redirect from one URL to other and how many according to you are too many. I mean if you get a website that contain 300 plus 301 redirections within the website, how will you deal with that? Please let me know if the question is not clear.
Technical SEO | | MoosaHemani0 -
Ok to internally link to pages with NOINDEX?
I manage a directory site with hundreds of thousands of indexed pages. I want to remove a significant number of these pages from the index using NOINDEX and have 2 questions about this: 1. Is NOINDEX the most effective way to remove large numbers of pages from Google's index? 2. The IA of our site means that we will have thousands of internal links pointing to these noindexed pages if we make this change. Is it a problem to link to pages with a noindex directive on them? Thanks in advance for all responses.
Technical SEO | | OMGPyrmont0 -
Tool to search relative vs absolute internal links
I'm preparing for a site migration from a .co.uk to a .com and I want to ensure all internal links are updated to point to the new primary domain. What tool can I use to check internal links as some are relative and others are absolute so I need to update them all to relative.
Technical SEO | | Lindsay_D0 -
Dofollow and Nofollow links
What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? I know that some sites/blogs only let you post nofollow links. In such a case how do I know if a comment I posted on a certain site will be a nofollow or dofollow? How about big traffic sites such as Huff Post. Do they only allow nofollow links?
Technical SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
Find broken links in Excel?
Hello, I have a large list of URL's in an excel sheet and I am looking for a way to check them for 404 errors. Please help! Adam
Technical SEO | | digitalops0 -
Link Volume - calculate what you need?
Hi everyone, an interesting question here. How do you determien what link volume you should try and get into your website? What analysis do you do to determine the number of links you feel is right to go into a back-link profiel every month? obviously there is no magic number but its an interesting question to know what others do. Obviously you don't want to build too many or too little. If you have been penalised for bad links in the past and are now back on track - how do you calculate the volume? Do you take links dropping out into consideration?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
How to find links to 404 pages?
I know that I used to be able to do this, but I can't seem to remember. One of the sites I am working on has had a lot of pages moving around lately. I am sure some links got lost in the fray that I would like to recover, what is the easiest way to see links going to a domain that are pointing to 404 pages?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0