1] OLD-FASHIONED HIERARCHY
Total average SEO impact: ★★★★★
Search engines need your help
Search engines do not give a heck about egalitarianism. They are truly old-fashioned in their way of thinking. But forgive them, it is in their DNA. They are built to rank and make order from chaos. They do that by constantly making decisions upon more or less important. They do not hide this character trait, it is the essence of what they do, listing up search results from 1 to a zillion based upon relevance and importance. So it should not come as a surprise that they use this line of thinking in all their daily work. But they too are overwhelmed by the load of disorder and non-structural content we throw at them. Believe me, being a search engine is a tedious and exhausting job. They have headaches all the time. So please, give them a helping hand. They really do appreciate it. If they crave for order and ranking we can help them making their lives easier by supplying them with a hierarchical URL structure. They are looking for logic, let’s give it to them. They will pay you back,… big time! Let me explain what I mean by using a hierarchical URL structure.
What is a hierarchical URL structure?
A hierarchical URL structure links relevant webpages to each other in a logical and hierarchical way. The concept of hierarchy is based upon the notion of superiority. Sounds discriminatory and in a way that is exactly what it is. In a hierarchical URL structure we will place a relevant but subordinate webpage under the more superior webpage. In most cases you can translate that into putting a more specific webpage under a more broader thematic webpage. Let us examine some hierarchical URL’s.
www.example.com/shoes/mens-shoes/mens-sneakers
This is a hierarchical URL that puts Men’s Sneakers under Men’s Shoes and the webpage Shoes is the most superior, or better said, broader webpage.
So the more specific webpages are lying under the more broader webpages. Why is that important? Search engines are very clever, they can discern good content from bad content, they can distinguish a fine sentence from a spammy one but they also welcome some help in their work. By linking webpages to each other via a logic URL structure they will understand your website content better and faster. By adding a hierarchy to the URL structure they will learn that your website offers depth within a specific theme.
In the example above search engines understand that your website offers more than only shoes, it offers men’s shoes and on an even deeper level they will find men’s sneakers. If you would not link these 3 webpages to each other then search engines would find separate pages without the connection of relevance. Do never forget: search engines may be very clever, and they are, but in essence they are machines we call computers. They thrive on logic, they love math and they need help from our human beings. Let us support them!
What do you gain by using a hierarchical URL structure? More organic traffic, yes. But from which pages? Let us go back at our example:
www.example.com/shoes/mens-shoes/mens-sneakers
This is one webpage that will get you to the men’s sneakers page on your website. Will this page become more relevant for search engines or will the upper levels bring in the traffic? So these are the 3 webpages:
www.example.com/shoes www.example.com/shoes/mens-shoes www.example.com/shoes/mens-shoes/mens-sneakers
You may have read that a higher level URL is theoretically more important to search engines than a lower level URL. So in theory the page www.example.com/shoes should be driving more organic traffic than the webpage www.example.com/shoes/mens-shoes/mens-sneakers.
But in practice that is not the case. Well, in theory it isn’t either. A higher level URL is higher in hierarchy, not in relevance. I noticed that from my research. What happens when you put new webpages in your website using a hierarchical URL structure? Within 1 or 2 months you will generally see the most specific webpage (the lowest level in hierarchy) begin to pick up organic traffic. After a few months you will see the higher level URL’s driving more and more traffic. So it works the other way around. There is a lot of logic into that of course. Search engine optimization is all about relevance and you will find that more on specific lower level pages than broader higher level pages.
What a hierarchical URL structure really does is linking a specific relevant page to broader themed but relevant webpages. So you will add some thematic juice to the more specific webpage by bringing this page under the banner of relevant thematic webpages. Your gain is threefold:
- Your more specific webpage will be better understood by search engines and it will get in organic traffic faster and in higher volumes
- The upper level webpages become more relevant as you are providing depth by linking it to a deeper level more specific webpage. So your upper level webpages become more relevant.
- Your website as a whole gains in relevance as search engines will know at a glance what general themes your website offers. So in our example your website will gain importance and relevance on the very broad theme of shoes and men’s shoes by using a hierarchical URL structure, but of course you will need more than 1 string of webpages to do that.
Another thing to take into account: With ecommerce sites that use a hierarchical URL structure on their product pages (like the example above with shoes) you will provide relevance and logic to search engines but this will not suffice to boost your organic traffic. There is so much competition from other ecommerce sites that will use more or less the same hierarchy and even more or less the same website content (same brands, same product details) that you will need to act upon it from a different angle. It still is wise to use URL hierarchy on your ecommerce pages. But for a real SEO boost you might consider the following content approach:
www.example.com/buying-tips-shoes/buying-mens-shoes/how-to-buy-mens-sneakers
Now you can use original website content within a hierarchical URL structure. That is the combination you are looking for.
So, what to do?
Think in themes and subthemes.
Put the broader theme on a higher level of hierarchy than the smaller theme.
Link from a higher hierarchy page to a lower one.
Write about your products instead of only showcasing them (as in an online shop environment).
Combine relevant keywords in one hierarchical URL structure, make another URL hierarchy form less related themes or keywords.
Most important
Make sure you name your URL’s congruously with your URL hierarchy structure.For examlpe, https://shinydeals.store/shop
2] I LOVE BRANDON BASEBALL CARDS
Total average SEO impact: ★★★★
Use the Brandon Baseball Cards keyword URL structure
Keywords in URL’s are a no-brainer you might say. But it is not so straightforward as one would think. Some questions pop to mind:
- What keywords to use in your URL?
- And what about repeating keywords in URL structures?
- Is there a logical strategy to follow in establishing URL’s?
To begin with the last question, there is. I call it the Brandon Baseball Cards URL structure. Eh, what? Let me explain. Back in the old ages of the internet (I think it was around 2006 or 2007) Google came up with a starter guide for Search Engine Optimization. Initially this document was made for internal use by Google. It was aimed at Google employees that were active in Google’s Search Department to cover the basics how SEO worked in line with their own search engine. After a while they decided to publish this document for webmasters to help them in their SEO strategy. It was one of the very few times that Google came up with real insights about what would work and what to avoid.
The official name of the document is called Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide and although Google has cut the link to this document it is still available through some other websites. While reading you will not find a lot of thrilling stuff, it is all very basic but that doesn’t make it less valuable. There is one part however where Google explains how to make up URL’s which is the jewel of this document. They use an example of a fictitious website that sells baseball cards under the name of Brandon Baseball Cards and this has always been the name that stuck in my mind.
In one of the examples they use the following URL: http://www.brandonbaseballcards.com/articles/ten-rarest-baseball-cards.htm Remember, this was in the days way before HTTPS was being used.
Within this document Google explains that using a logical and descriptive (readable) URL structure improves the usability for users and search engines. Search engines inform themselves by these descriptive URL’s. In Google’s own words: “If your URL contains relevant words, this provides users and search engines with more information about the page than an ID or oddly named parameter would”.
When reading Google’s document and looking at the URL structure you will notice that using a keyword within the URL is fine by Google and even more importantly they advise to repeat it in lower levels of the structure.
I have expanded the Brandon Baseball Card concept and I found out that as long as your URL is adding depth to the central keyword you may use the central keyword within that lower level URL. In practice this would be a SEO friendly and correct URL: www.example.com/used-cars/used-cars-ford/used-cars-ford-mustang
It may look spammy but it is not as with each deeper level page you will add depth to the central keyword “used cars”. I used this keyword approach in URL structures very often and the results are great.
Coming back to this Brandon Baseball Cards concept, is it still valid after all these years? Yes, it is and the same goes for almost everything that is included in this Google document. You might say that it is the core of SEO, so please do read it.
Answering our first question, what keywords should you choose in your URL? It depends on your webpage content and the central theme or subtheme that you are aiming at. But the structure must always be logical and the URL naming should reflect the webpage content.
So, what to do?
Start with identifying relevant keywords.
Group keywords together in a URL structure and repeat the central keyword theme. Make sure your content perfectly matches the URL.
Most important
Repeat keywords in your URL, but always add depth.
