Url structure with dash or slash

[muminaydin]

Hi There

We have a content website. We don't rank well category image related searches but we get quite good traffic for those keywords. Those keywords are mostly like "category images". We want to change our url structure and we have 2 options now.

1- domain.com/category/category-images

2-domain.com/category/images

option 1 repeats the category name so it looks spammy

option 2 doesn't really have the keyword.

any ideas which one tho choose?

Thanks!

ps: we don't want to use domain.com/category-images (too many root link)

[WesleySmits]

I would recommend going for option 2 -> domain.com/category/images

The keyword you mentioned is "Category images". Both of these words are now in the URL structure. The difference SEO wise is very very very small though.
The structure of option 2 is much simpler and more straightforward. It looks less spammy and is easier to type in. Therefor it's better for the user and for you to use option 2.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask me

[Chris.Menke]

It's such a subtle difference SEO wise (if, in fact, there is a difference at all) that it really works out to what's best in terms of the user experience (internally or externally).  I wouldn't waste much time considering it--just pick the one that seems to work best for your architecture/visitors and go with it.

[donford]

The basic question (correct me if I'm wrong) is how to rank better for Image searches.
The answer, has little to do with the options you listed.

The best way to achieve this

• Name the image appropriately (example Red-Ford-Mustang-Convertiable-2014.jpg not rfmc2014.jpg)
• Use appropriate image alt text (example "Car's Side View 2014 Mustang Convertible")
• Place images on appropriate pages, meaning you wouldn't want to show a red ford mustang on a page about staplers (the content of the page helps the image

Hope this helps

[RobMay]

In my experiences and tests (although some disagree in search) don't forget to consider that (folder depth) IE - number of directories beyond the URL may have an impact on your search performance I can have an impact/factor in how deep spiders both crawl and index sites with regards to relevance and competitive landscape mapping. Just keep in mind

So you with www.domain.com/category/images/anotherfolder/ might be much longer to get your images ranking vs www.domain.com/images/ - but again, it doesn't always work in a framework for architecture if you have multiple, hundreds or thousands of /category/ sections in the sites design.

Try to trim down your URL to make it the most simplified, but user friendly (as possible :). Keeping it short for any pages and or directories also makes it more user friendly in that people can remember where the file was and the URL it was on

Folder location still has impact on crawl depth and rankings. The above mentioned features to improve relevancy for images are still useful (see post above), so ensure to name each image, and use hyphens between words, use the IMG ALT text on every image to identify, and the location of said images on various location page/URL's.

If you can get around removing the /category/ folder and reducing the URL to www.domain.com/images/ where all your image files are located, that might be better, but I have only used this in a handful of cases. Usually, more often than not .

Hope that helps!

[muminaydin]

Hi donford

Thanks for your answer, but I don't ask about image searches, the keyword is "category images" so it is not about image tags/desciription.

(we already have correct tags and names)

[muminaydin]

Thanks Wesley,

if difference between category-images and category/images is that small, I would like to with option 2 then.

[NDAY]

Hey Rob,

Just throwing some ideas in here.

Is it folder depth or distance in terms of number of clicks from Homepage that makes a difference? It was my understanding that using a very flat structure was pretty outdated SEO?

One of the issues I think that get overlooked a lot when considering URL structure is how to structure URLs so you can drill down easily into different types of content/categories/channels.

As I understand it Google see a slash as the root of a folder. You can see this in Analytics, a page with a slash at the end of it has a folder icon next to it and you are shown the stats for that folder. This means that if you remove the trailing slashes from actual pages you can see how separate areas of the site are performing as a whole.

Another argument for using a folders to structuring URLs could be that "link juice" spreads throughout the folder, perhaps even contextually. For instance if I have a folder which contains all of my pages about widgets then as my link profile to the pages in the widgets folder all the pages in that folder benefit. It seems logical that if an item was in a relevant directory that x contextual links then it would benefit.

As I said, just a bit food for thought, not sure if my theories are correct but I'd be interested what you guys think?

Neil.