4 replies to this topic

[Corvin]

Hey there.

My problem is the following: the company that is building the websites of our company wants to create internal pages this way:
domain.com/xy/directory/language/page/12.html -> About Us page
domain.com/zn/directory/language/page/12/34.html -> Product Page

When I try to convince them to create it like this: domain.com/language/page.html or domain.com/language/product.html, telling them it's better from user's point of view (they can actually see where they are on the website), from usability point of view (should we ever need to put the URL on a banner, on a t-shirt, bla, it won't fit) and from google's point of view (i KNOW it's not a decision-maker when it comes to ranking our page, but if I think about it reasonably, something hidden behind 4-6 slashes cannot be as important as something right after the homepage, so it DOES have some slight effect on the rankings at the end of the day), they tell me I'm wrong.

Now my question for you guys is do you also think I am wrong from all 3 points of view?

[qwerty]

Personally, I like URLs that illustrate the structure of a site. If that's what these URLs are doing, and a user can work their way up from specific content to more general content, I'd be OK with it. However, if it actually takes five clicks to get to a page that has a URL indicating that its five levels away from the home page, and that page is important enough that you need it to be indexed about as quickly as the home page, that's not going to work.

But navigation and directory structure don't have to mirror each other. You can link to a page with a URL that indicates that it's deep within the site from the home page if that makes sense for users.

And of course, if these URLs are being generated for no reason other than the fact that they're using some clumsy content management system, that's no excuse. You need a different CMS.

[Jill]

but if I think about it reasonably, something hidden behind 4-6 slashes cannot be as important as something right after the homepage, so it DOES have some slight effect on the rankings at the end of the day), they tell me I'm wrong.

I agree with them, you are wrong.

Search engines don't care about the apparent directory structure based on URLs, only the actual site architecture based on how everything links together within your navigation.

[Michael Martinez]

Jill, did you look at that awful URL structure the Web design company supposedly wants to use? There is nothing user-friendly in that mess.

Forget the search engines -- go with the simpler URLs so that users DO understand where they are.

I'd fire the Web design company that didn't want to do it right. Based solely on what you share here, I would say they don't know what they're talking about.

[qwerty]

If the examples in the original post are accurate, I agree. Those URLs say little to nothing about the structure of the site or the content of the pages.