Why use a hierarchical, hyphenated URL structure?
Continuing our series of frequently asked questions, this article looks at URL structure with regard to SEO.
The specific question that we were asked was “How will implementing a hierarchical, hyphenated URL structure improve search results?”
This is something which we would recommend if the existing URL structure was detrimental to usability and search.
http://www.stewartsgroceryanddairy.co.uk/department -9/category-122/?id=3242234
The above URL contains a number of elements which could be seen as search unfriendly.
- The domain name itself is difficult to read, for both search engine and user.
- The sub-folders relay no useful information to search engines or users.
- The parameters at the end are meaningless.
A search friendly URL is meaningful to users and search engines alike.
A search friendly URL
Ideally, a URL should make sense to both searchers and search engine spiders. This can be achieved by having a hierarchically structured website. For example, a page about English cheddar on a grocery site might have the URL:
http://www.stewarts-grocery.co.uk/dairy/cheese/english-cheddar/
Here, the URL for a page for English cheddar cheese has a good domain name, which includes the brand and a keyword pertaining to the type of business, and the rest of the path is broken down into a logical folder structure.
Another point to note is that some search engines do not like very deep hierarchies. For example, Bing’s recommendation is to keep depth to 4 subdirectories from the root. Yahoo! has also published similar advice. Our advice would be to keep the number of subdirectories down where possible. Another reason to keep the number of directories down is that there is evidence to suggest that ” a searcher is twice as likely to click a short URL than they are to click a long URL.”
Compound Words
The above URL could equally have been written as:
http://www.stewarts-grocery.co.uk/diary/ englishcheddarcheese.html
or
http://www.stewarts-grocery.co.uk/diary/ english_cheddar_cheese.html
Both are valid URLs. The problem with the first example is that search engines may see the nonsense word “englishcheddarcheese” rather than the phrase “english cheddar cheese”. While the search engines are getting better at picking individual words out of such compound words, they are by no means perfect, and we recommend using word separators rather than leaving this to chance.
Using underscores as word separators can have a similar effect. Search engines may see the use of underscores as a way of joining words together rather than separating them, so the second example above would be seen as the nonsense word “english_cheddar_cheese”, rather than “english cheddar cheese”. Another problem with underscores is that they can be hidden by underlining, as in the following example
http://www.stewarts-grocery.co.uk/diary/ double_gloucester_cheese.html
This can lead to confusion when reading the URL from a printed document; it is difficult to tell if the above is “double_gloucester_cheese” or “double gloucester cheese”.
Google’s Matt Cutts did, however, say at WordCamp 2007 that Google was looking into treating underscores as word separators (this was misreported at the time, as underscores were now ok to use as word separators) . Bing has also recommended not using underscores.
Implementing a hierarchical, hyphenated URL structure has many benefits, both for search (easier for the search engine algorithms to ascertain the purpose of the page) and usability (easier for users to read, making it more likely for them to click through from the search results).
Tags: best practice, hierarchical structure, url