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.
Should I Add Location to ALL of My Client's URLs?
-
Hi Mozzers,
My first Moz post! Yay! I'm excited to join the squad
My client is a full service entertainment company serving the Washington DC Metro area (DC, MD & VA) and offers a host of services for those wishing to throw events/parties. Think DJs for weddings, cool photo booths, ballroom lighting etc.
I'm wondering what the right URL structure should be. I've noticed that some of our competitors do put DC area keywords in their URLs, but with the moves of SERPs to focus a lot more on quality over keyword density, I'm wondering if we should focus on location based keywords in traditional areas on page (e.g. title tags, headers, metas, content etc) instead of having keywords in the URLs alongside the traditional areas I just mentioned. So, on every product related page should we do something like:
example.com/weddings/planners-washington-dc-md-va
example.com/weddings/djs-washington-dc-md-va
example.com/weddings/ballroom-lighting-washington-dc-md-vaOR
example.com/weddings/planners
example.com/weddings/djs
example.com/weddings/ballroom-lightingIn both cases, we'd put the necessary location based keywords in the proper places on-page. If we follow the location-in-URL tactic, we'd use DC area terms in all subsequent product page URLs as well. Essentially, every page outside of the home page would have a location in it.
Thoughts?
Thank you!!
-
No website in particular that springs to mind, I'm afraid. But it's not uncommon practice, and I'm sure you'll find plenty within your industry from a little competitor research.
Good luck!
-
This is great stuff. Thank you! Would you happen to have an example of a site that does this well? I think you're spot on in your suggestions and would love to see it in practice.
-
(I had posted my response, but Moz didn't fancy saving it for some reason and it's just gone. So I'll try and remember what I typed and repost it...)
I wouldn't dilute the site authority by using subdomains for your locations.
As a user, I would recommend your main site navigation lists the different event types (weddings, parties, corporate, etc) and branch your locations from there.
e.g.
-
Weddings - /weddings/ (Weddings)
-
Miami - /weddings/miami/ (Weddings in Miami)
-
Planners - /weddings/miami/planners/ (Wedding Planners in Miami)
-
DJs - /weddings/miami/djs/ (Wedding DJs in Miami)
-
Ballroom Lighting - /weddings/miami/ballroom-lighting/ (Ballroom Lighting for Weddings in Miami)
That structure seems the most logical to me, but you should do your own research to back this up. Conduct thorough keyword research for each service in each location and structure your landing page content accordingly. For example, main category pages broadly targeting root keyword, but display "cards" or sections that link to each location without optimising those main category pages for the locations - save this for the location-based landing pages. So this sub-navigation is in the body, rather than in the main navigation, for user-friendliness.
I think with something like events, you don't want to shove the locations in the user's face first thing. Let them see what you offer (the different event types), then delve down into the locations, and the specific services within those locations.
People are free to disagree with me, and I welcome critique on these thoughts. I do think with SEO, it gets to a point after "best practices" that it comes down to more of personal preferences.
-
-
Excellent advice Ria. I'll likely give that advice to the client.
Another question that brewed from this: how then should main navigation be handled as we expand? obviously we can't have D.C. centric keywords in the main navigation as the business expands. I think we could create unique content and landing pages for each individual service and location, but how would that be incorporate into the overall user flow and URL structure?
Would it be more of a sitemap play? If someone goes to www.example.com, should they be given an option to choose their location then be routed to that specific city's subdomain and yhenbrowse from there?
I guess my main question is, how exactly should we structure the site navigation for users from multiple cities to both please UX and the big G?
Thank you!
-
For a handful of different locations, it's quite common to structure them as different subdirectories, as you said. site.com/weddings/miami/planners or /miami/weddings/planners - whichever makes the most sense for your customer base and how you're targeting the content.
Just ensure that these are not considered doorway pages or appear to be too templated. Make each landing page for each location unique, and tailored specifically to your customers in each location. If you have nothing unique to say, then you don't need separate pages. It would be best to target the different locations on the same landing pages. But you being the expert in the industry, I can imagine it'll be easy enough to cater toward each audience specifically. Especially when you're not dealing with tens if not hundreds or thousands of different towns.
If you are certain on expanding to different cities soon, then it might be best to begin the URL structuring with /washington-dc/ subdirectory somewhere, so you don't have to change this later.
-
Thank you, Ria. That's very helpful.
Im curious, when the business expands to different cities in the coming months (for example, Miami and Chicago are being considered, not yet finalized), then in that case I would assume we need to have location in the URL path for the sake of designation and differentiation. This may be a sub folder in and of itself though. Thoughts?
-
I'd avoid adding the location in the URL if you only work with those services for a single location. It looks messy to the user, and can look spammy to Google. And it would save you from having to change the URL and set up redirects, if you need to remove the location keywords from the URL at a later date in order to please the Big G. Optimising for location within the content, title and meta can be easily tweaked with time. Tweaking URLs can be a lot messier.
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
-
This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location error using pro-sitemaps.com
Hey, guys, We are using the pro-sitemaps.com tool to automate our sitemaps on our properties, but some of them give this error "This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location" for all the urls. Strange thing is that not all of them are with the error and most have all the urls indexed already. Do you have any experience with the tool and what is your opinion? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
Need a layman's definition/analogy of the difference between schema and structured data
I'm currently writing a blog post about schema. However I want to set the record straight that schema is not exactly the same as structured data, although both are often used interchangeably. I understand this schema.org is a vocabulary of global identifiers for properties and things. Structured data is what Google officially stated as "a standard way to annotate your content so machines can understand it..." Does anybody know of a good analogy to compare the two? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Brackets vs Encoded URLs: The "Same" in Google's eyes, or dup content?
Hello, This is the first time I've asked a question here, but I would really appreciate the advice of the community - thank you, thank you! Scenario: Internal linking is pointing to two different versions of a URL, one with brackets [] and the other version with the brackets encoded as %5B%5D Version 1: http://www.site.com/test?hello**[]=all&howdy[]=all&ciao[]=all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mirabile
Version 2: http://www.site.com/test?hello%5B%5D**=all&howdy**%5B%5D**=all&ciao**%5B%5D**=all Question: Will search engines view these as duplicate content? Technically there is a difference in characters, but it's only because one version encodes the brackets, and the other does not (See: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp) We are asking the developer to encode ALL URLs because this seems cleaner but they are telling us that Google will see zero difference. We aren't sure if this is true, since engines can get so _hung up on even one single difference in character. _ We don't want to unnecessarily fracture the internal link structure of the site, so again - any feedback is welcome, thank you. 🙂0 -
Two Pages with the Same Name Different URL's
I was hoping someone could give me some insight into a perplexing issue that I am having with my website. I run an 20K product ecommerce website and I am finding it necessary to have two pages for my content: 1 for content category pages about wigets one for shop pages for wigets 1st page would be .com/shop/wiget/ 2nd page would be .com/content/wiget/ The 1st page would be a catalogue of all the products with filters for the customer to narrow down wigets. So ultimately the URL for the shop page could look like this when the customer filters down... .com/shop/wiget/color/shape/ The second page would be content all about the Wigets. This would be types of wigets colors of wigets, how wigets are used, links to articles about wigets etc. Here are my questions. 1. Is it bad to have two pages about wigets on the site, one for shopping and one for information. The issue here is when I combine my content wiget with my shop wiget page, no one buys anything. But I want to be able to provide Google the best experience for rankings. What is the best approach for Google and the customer? 2. Should I rel canonical all of my .com/shop/wiget/ + .com/wiget/color/ etc. pages to the .com/content/wiget/ page? Or, Should I be canonicalizing all of my .com/shop/wiget/color/etc pages to .com/shop/wiget/ page? 3. Ranking issues. As it is right now, I rank #1 for wiget color. This page on my site would be .com/shop/wiget/color/ . If I rel canonicalize all of my pages to .com/content/wiget/ I am going to loose my rankings because all of my shop/wiget/xxx/xxx/ pages will then point to .com/content/wiget/ page. I am just finding with these massive ecommerce sites that there is WAY to much potential for duplicate content, not enough room to allow Google the ability to rank long tail phrases all the while making it completely complicated to offer people pages that promote buying. As I said before, when I combine my content + shop pages together into one page, my sales hit the floor (like 0 - 15 dollars a day), when i just make a shop page my sales are like (1k+ a day). But I have noticed that ever since Penguin and Panda my rankings have fallen from #1 across the board to #15 and lower for a lot of my phrase with the exception of the one mentioned above. This is why I want to make an information page about wigets and a shop page for people to buy wigets. Please advise if you would. Thanks so much for any insight you can give me!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SKP0 -
Soft 404's from pages blocked by robots.txt -- cause for concern?
We're seeing soft 404 errors appear in our google webmaster tools section on pages that are blocked by robots.txt (our search result pages). Should we be concerned? Is there anything we can do about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline4 -
Should I use both Google and Bing's Webmaster Tools at the same time?
Hi All, Up till now I've been registered only to Google WMT. Do you recommend using at the same time Bing's WMT? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
To subnav or NOT to subnav... that's my question.... :)
We are working on a new website that is golf related and wondering about whether or not we should set up a subnavigation dropdown menu from the main menu. For example: GOLF PACKAGES
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesO
>> 2 Round Packages
>> 3 Round Packages
>> 4 Round Packages
>> 5 Round Packages GOLF COURSES
>> North End Courses
>> Central Courses
>> South End Courses This would actually be very beneficial to our users from a usability standpoint, BUT what about from an SEO standpoint? Is diverting all the link juice to these inner pages from the main site navigation harmful? Should we just create a page for GOLF PACKAGES and break it down on that page?0 -
What's your best hidden SEO secret?
Don't take that question too serious but all answers are welcome 😉 Answer to all:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | petrakraft
"Gentlemen, I see you did you best - at least I hope so! But after all I suppose I am stuck here to go on reading the SEOmoz blog if I can't sqeeze more secrets from you!9