Confused: Url Restructure

[HB17]

Hello,

We're giving our website a bit of a spring clean in terms of SEO. The site is doing ok, but after the time invested in SEO, content and last year's migration of multiple sites into one, we're not seeing the increase in traffic we had hoped.

Our current urls look something like this:

/a-cake-company/cup-cakes/strawberry

We have the company name as the first level as we with the migration we migrated many companies into one site. What we're considering is testing some pages with a structure like this:

/cup-cakes/cup-cake-company-strawberry

So we'll lose a level and we'll focus more on the category of the product rather than the brand.

What's your thoughts on this? We weren't going to do a mass change yet, just a test, but is this something we should be focusing on? In terms of organisation our current url structure is perfect, but what about from an SEO point of view? In terms of keywords customers are looking for both options.

Thanks!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

If it were upto me, I would suggest the URLs going something like this:

www.brandname.com/cupcakes/strawberry

This tells me the brand, the type of product, and then a specific product. The beauty here is you can do it with all of your products (if you have more):

www.brandname.com/cupcakes/carrot-cake
www.brandname.com/cupcakes/strawberry-lemonade
www.brandname.com/cakes/bundt

If you have variations below cupcake but above flavor, you can add that between cupcakes and flavors, so:

www.brandname.com/cupcakes/variation/flavors
or...
www.brandname.com/cupcakes/best-sellers/flavors
www.brandname.com/cupcakes/favorites/flavors

Either way, I wouldn't put your company name as a folder path because it should already be in the domain of your website.

Here are some more resources if you want to read a bit more into URL structures - here is a great resource as well from Rand - I suggest doing so!

Hope this helps a bit! Let me know if you have any questions or comments - good luck!

[HB17]

Thanks for your response Patrick!

The problem we have is that because we represent 8 brands, these aren't in our domain, so in order to include the domain we currently have those as level one, e.g.:

/cake-company-1
/cake-company-2
/cake-company-3

etc...

Our current url structure allows us to have the site neatly organised under each manufacturer of our products, but this then makes the urls quite long and deep.

Would you suggest combining the brand with the product it's self so that they are both in the url and this therefore reduces the url by one level?

E.g. - /cake-company-1-cup-cakes/strawberry

That way we can have:

/cake-company-2-cup-cakes/strawberry
 /cake-company-3-cup-cakes/strawberry
 /cake-company-4-cup-cakes/strawberry

Etc?

Thanks!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi again

I see - sorry about that!

If you are showcasing different companies on your site then it should be...

/cake-company/cupcakes/type-of-cupcake

Apologies on that. Out of curiosity - are all of these companies separate and active companies? Or did they all merge into one larger company? Or is this like a listing website of different companies an their products?

[HB17]

Thanks Patrick!

They are all separate companies and our customer deals with all the different brands, so we have to keep them all separate.

We currently are using:** /cake-company/cupcakes/type-of-cupcake **as suggested, but we're worried it's too far down by the time you get to the product?

We've seen the PA be significantly reduced by being this deep and wonder if it has any other effect SEO wise?

Thank you!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi again Harry

Here's what I would do.

I would take a look at the following resources:
On-Page Factors (Moz)
The Ultimate Guide to SEO for E-commerce Websites (KISSmetrics)
17 Essential SEO Strategies for E-Commerce Sites (Inc)
Technical Site Audit Checklist: 2015 Edition (Moz)

There are probably opportunities beyond your URL structure that you are missing - your URL structure and depth (you're not going that deep at all) alone won't hurt your PA and DA the way you think it will.

Do a quick honest assessment of the layout and content of your website and see where you can enhance areas.

Let me know if you have any questions! Good luck!