URL important?

[philiporchard]

Hi,

We're rethinking all our URLs to remove the fact that they can be tampered with!

Our question is regarding the new structure:

Our top category for 'Home Services' will be:

www.Cardiff.co.uk/Home-Services/

What will be the best URL (for SEO purposes) for the 'Plumbers' sub category

www.Cardiff.co.uk/Home-Services/Plumbers

or

www.Cardiff.co.uk/Plumbers/

My feeling is that the most successful sites only include the 'sub category' in the URL, e.g:

http://www.freeindex.co.uk/cardiff-plumbers.htm
http://www.city-visitor.com/cardiff/plumbers.html

Any thoughts?

 

[fish]

Personally I tend to go for whateversite.co.uk/resultpage over whateversite.co.uk/category/resultpage - the shorter the better IMO. The book is open on what works best re SEO / Goog / etc with differing opinion depending on who you talk to.

 

[Aaron Clifford]

I prefer the cardiff.co.uk/plumbers/ myself. Not sure on the SEO side of things.

 

[philiporchard]

Thanks for feedback so far.

Does anyone know if there is an advantage re. SEO?

Thanks

 

[jim1]

Thanks for feedback so far.

Does anyone know if there is an advantage re. SEO?

Thanks

My 2 cents worth....

You’re listing plumbers in Cardiff

www.cardiff.co.uk/plumbers/ = keywords in url = Cardiff + Plumbers

This and the title element being short and sweet, with the above keywords in could work well.

As this is the landing page, it could theN go into premium paid listings? Showing the town or village of the company?

www.cardiff.co.uk/plumbers/birchgrove.aspx keywords in url = Cardiff + Plumbers + Birchgrove

<title>Cardiff Plumbers | Plumber in Birchgrove</title>

 

[Ashton]

Not to mention that users googling you are more likely to click on the shorter, more relevant url.

 

[philiporchard]

As I type this our current plumbers' page on Cardiff is:

cardiff.co.uk/2524-Home-Services/2893-Plumbers-in-Cardiff

Hopefully, if all goes well, very soon we will have much friendlier urls:

http://www.cardiff.co.uk/plumbers/

Fingers crossed it will work - will find out in the next 5 mins!

 

[dotNetFreak]

It's worth 301'ing the old URL to the new location if it's permanent (which I guess it is?). It's currently 302'd

 

[Maccke]

Basically depends on how you link to the page internally.

Considering there is not many searches for 'home services' (260/month), and it makes the URL way longer, I'd consider to just use /plumbers.

 

[bensd]

I posed a similar thread a few weeks ago which may be of help:

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation/86633-site-structure-keywords.html

Hi,

We're rethinking all our URLs to remove the fact that they can be tampered with!

Our question is regarding the new structure:

Our top category for 'Home Services' will be:

www.Cardiff.co.uk/Home-Services/

What will be the best URL (for SEO purposes) for the 'Plumbers' sub category

www.Cardiff.co.uk/Home-Services/Plumbers

or

www.Cardiff.co.uk/Plumbers/

My feeling is that the most successful sites only include the 'sub category' in the URL, e.g:

http://www.freeindex.co.uk/cardiff-plumbers.htm
http://www.city-visitor.com/cardiff/plumbers.html

Any thoughts?

 

[philiporchard]

OK... Our plumbers in Cardiff page is now:

www.cardiff.co.uk/plumbers/

301 is now set up for all old URLs, rather than 302s.

Plumbers in Cardiff is at No. 23, so hopefully we'll see this climb quickly

 

[thecat]

Definitely domain.xyz/category/content

Shows a well structured and easy to follow site.

 

[Maccke]

OK... Our plumbers in Cardiff page is now:

www.cardiff.co.uk/plumbers/

301 is now set up for all old URLs, rather than 302s.

Plumbers in Cardiff is at No. 23, so hopefully we'll see this climb quickly

I think it looks good like that..

 

[Mo.]

Cardiff.co.uk/plumbers/ looks best.

The following maybe of interest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=971qGsTPs8M and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRzMhlFZz9I