URL and Site Structure

How you structure and label the pages of a website

has a material effect on SEO. Most professional SEO

consultants get paid to fix “on site” issues caused by

poor URL and site structure.

Search engines continue to improve their ability to

index and understand poorly structured websites.

However, best practices should be adhered to in

building your site. Many website builders and content

management systems used by beginners and small

companies produce poor URLs that hurt SEO.

Let’s define what good URL and site structure is, and

review some examples of it in proper use.

URL Structure •  URL Structure

•  URLs should be descriptive and labeled with a keyword(s).

•  Each page on a website should target one keyword, and be named with that keyword. Ex: Your “About” page should be named “about.html”.

•  All folders should follow a similar naming pattern.

•  “Clean” URLs contain only keywords, not numbers or code.

URL Structure Ex: A good URL for a site about soccer, and a page that sells Nike soccer shorts is this: http://www.soccerpro.com/Nike-Soccer-Shorts-c358/

Ex: A bad URL for the same site would be:

http://www.soccer.com/Navigation.process?Ne=178&N=4294960224+369

Site Structure •  Site structure means how you layout your website,

and how each page is linked to one another.

•  Every page on a site should have a clear “click

path” from/to the home page. This means user

should be able to click directly from the home page

on to any page of the site, in as few clicks as

possible.

•  Proper site structure includes a Site Map.

•  Most sites are broken down into categories,

displayed in their main navigation. Ensure that your

site has intuitive navigation labeled with keywords

that are easy for both people and search engines to

understand.

Site Structure  Ex:  Con(nue  with  the  soccer  example.    Soccer.com  sells  Nike,  Adidas,  and  Puma  brand  shoes.    Their  naviga(on  should  include:  

 Home      |      Nike      |      Adidas      |      Puma          

For More Info Please check out:

spreadeffect.com/blog

@ChrisWarden_SE