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.
Url folder structure
-
I work for a travel site and we have pages for properties in destinations and am trying to decide how best to organize the URLs
basically we have our main domain, resort pages and we'll also have articles about each resort so the URL structure will actually get longer:
A. domain.com/main-keyword/state/city-region/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village__ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature _
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village/kid-friend-pool_B. Another way to structure would be to remove the location and keyword folders and combine. Note that some of the resort names are long and spaces are being replaced dynamically with dashes.
ex. domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village__ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature_
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village-kid-friend-pool_Question: is that too many folders or should i combine or break up? What would you do with this? Trying to avoid too many dashes.
-
Hi Eric,
I am sharing one article on how site can have structured URLs. This article explained exact issue that you have mentioned in your question.
http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/structured-urls/
Thanks
-
Hi Eric. I'd recommend using folders as being navigational and/or site-section specific. As such, they can be shorter--like the two letter abbreviation for states--and create less worries about URL length that way. A ton of other signals are going to be contributing to a page being recognized as being about a resort in Florida than FL vs Florida in the URL alone.
Once you have your structure figured out, using hyphenated URLs that often mimic the title tag of the page is generally a best practice as this gives the user the best idea of what a link is about while also containing keywords when someone links to the page solely via URL. The Moz blog has plenty of examples such as: http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/how-to-stop-spam-bots-from-ruining-your-analytics-referral-data.. Short domain, short folder name, then the content. Each bit is readable and understandable as to why it's there.
See: http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/url for more. Cheers!
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
-
Vanity URLs are being indexed in Google
We are currently using vanity URLs to track offline marketing, the vanity URL is structured as www.clientdomain.com/publication, this URL then is 302 redirected to the actual URL on the website not a custom landing page. The resulting redirected URL looks like: www.clientdomain.com/xyzpage?utm_source=print&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=printcampaign. We have started to notice that some of the vanity URLs are being indexed in Google search. To prevent this from happening should we be using a 301 redirect instead of a 302 and will the Google index ignore the utm parameters in the URL that is being 301 redirect to? If not, any suggestions on how to handle? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | seogirl221 -
Flat vs Hierarchical URL Structure
Hi, We are redoing our site structure and I was wondering what are the benefits of having a flat url structure. For example store.com/product instead of doing store.com/category/product. I noticed sites doing it both ways, even a-moz.groupbuyseo.org has both structures ex: a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo and when you clck on something it brings you to a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/seo-expert-quiz (even though following the previous logic it should be a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/seo-expert-quiz) Please advise, Thanks!
Technical SEO | | WSteven0 -
Blog article URL - with or without date?
Quick question to all you folks: does including the date in a blog article's permalink affect rankings? For example, here's an article with the month and year, as well as the blog title: http://www.ayzanyc.com/blog/2012/12/difference-between-hot-chocolate-hot-cocoa/ Is it better to omit the date and just put the blog title? Also, if is better to avoid using the date, is it worth it to change the link structure of our previous articles (given that the URL will now be different), or should we just focus on future articles? Thanks ahead of time for your advice.
Technical SEO | | onurkiyak0 -
URL rewriting from subcategory to category
Hello everybody! I have quite simple question about URL rewriting from subcategory to category, yet I can't find any solution to this problem (due to lack of my deeper apache programming knowledge). Here is my problem/question: we have two website url structures that causes dublicate problems: www.website.lt/language/category/ www.website.lt/language/category/1/ 1 and 2 pages are absolutely same (both also returns 200 OK). What we need is 301 redirect from 2 to 1 without any other deeper categories redirects (like www.website.com/language/category/1/169/ redirecting to .../category/1/ or .../category/). Here goes .htaccess URL rewrite rules: RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&par4=$6&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/$ /index.php?lang=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] There are other redirects that handles non-www to www and related issues: RedirectMatch 301 ^/lt/$ http://www.domain.lt/ RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.lt RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.lt/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.domain.lt/$1/ [R=301,L] At this moment we cannot solve this problem with rel canonical (due to our CMS limits). Thanks for your help guys! If You need any other details on our coding, just let me know.
Technical SEO | | jkundrotas0 -
Drupal URL Aliases vs 301 Redirects + Do URL Aliases create duplicates?
Hi all! I have just begun work on a Drupal site which heavily uses the URL Aliases feature. I fear that it is creating duplicate links. For example:: we have http://www.URL.com/index.php and http://www.URL.com/ In addition we are about to switch a lot of links and want to keep the search engine benefit. Am I right in thinking URL aliases change the URL, while leaving the old URL live and without creating search engine friendly redirects such as 301s? Thanks for any help! Christian
Technical SEO | | ChristianMKTG0 -
Use of + in url good or bad?
Hi, I am working on a SEO project for a client.
Technical SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
Some of the urls have a + between the keyword.
like www.example.com/make+me+happy/ Is this good or bad for seo?
Or is it maybe better to use - ? Thanks!0 -
Should me URLs be uppercase or lowercase
I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of 301 redirects for me site. Should I make them Lowercase, uppercase, or does it matter? Also, do I want to be using hyphens (-), or underscores (_)? Any other tips? EX: http://www.stupid.com/golf-slippers.html OR http://www.stupid.com/Golf-Slippers.html
Technical SEO | | JustinStupid0