
Ask HN: Which is better for SEO? - tixocloud
I have an e-commerce website. However, it looks like other websites are ranking higher on my products than I am on my own.<p>My current product page URL structure looks like this:
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;example.com&#x2F;myproducts&#x2F;1234567&#x2F;toys&#x2F;lego-star-wars.html<p>Would I rank higher in Google if I amended my URL to be like this:
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;example.com&#x2F;toys&#x2F;lego-star-wars.html<p>Thanks. It&#x27;s really annoying that other websites are just scraping my products and ranking higher than me and then coming over to charge me for leads.
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nosideeffects
The URL should have little to no effect in the grand scheme of things. Several
factors go into their page ranking algorithm, and it is constantly changing.

The content the page is far more important. You might want to ensure the site
is usable on mobile and includes content that is relevant in the meta tags
when appropriate. You could look into adding microdata
([http://schema.org/docs/gs.html](http://schema.org/docs/gs.html)) as another
means of giving the search crawler pertinent information.

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ruraljuror
At the simple level of SEO that we are discussing here, the thought process
should be simple. There is one rule: Do what is best for your users. If you
read Google's recommendations for SEO, that is what they tell you. Don't think
about how your changes will affect the search engine, think about whether they
are better for the user.

So in this case, the second one is much better. I would much rather type the
second one into an address bar than the first. I might even be able to
remember the second one, if I visited frequently.

If you are going to change your urls, I would also recommend losing the .html
file extension and serving the page dynamically. so it is just toys/lego-star-
wars Such a url can transition easily whenever you make technical changes to
your framework.

Finally, you want to be super careful about changing any URLs. I would
minimize the number of changes you make (it will always set you back) and make
sure you have 301s from the old to new.

Speaking of tracking, testing, and measuring, keep in mind that traffic--not
rankings are your end goal. I would use the ranking stats provided by google
wmt as a rough indicator, but focus much much much much more closely on your
traffic.

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saturngirl
How are these scraped websites charging you for leads - do you have an
official affiliate program?

If it is not your official affiliate program, then you need to stop paying for
the leads. You probably have an enterprising black hat who is getting his site
ranked with your content purely to sell traffic to you. Disabling the reward
mechanism would help stop this

If it is an official affiliate program, then you should set the following
rules for your program.

1\. No content scraping allowed. Let the affiliates create their own content
that adds value to the potential customers.

2\. All affiliate sites should link directly to your website (i.e. traffic is
not sent via javascript or any other method) Doing this will ensure that
Google know which is the main website and which are affiliates.

3\. No bidding on your keywords related to your brand.

[edited for formatting]

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threesixandnine
Content, content, content. Did I say content? Interesting content, unique
descriptions of products and speed, speed, speed. After that you go and split
test the hell out of it. Buy adwords and see which version/s perform best.

That url by itself will not get you noticable improvement but it's still worth
it in my opinion. Changing "myproducts" to "toys" will certainly help. If you
are just removing numbers from url - not so much.

Oh, and get a list going. Set it up so that users receive targeted offers. You
say you are Data Analyst so that shouldn't be an issue.

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dtournemille
Yes, a flatter URL structure will likely improve SEO. I've seen this with our
SEO consultants on our site. But URL structure is one aspect. Backlinks and
quality content are probably more important. And mobile. If your mobile
experience isn't up to par, you could be penalized. And speed. Is your site
fast? If not, ya, could be penalized, too. You should have a look at your
Google Webmaster Tools account first.

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tixocloud
Thanks. I'll have a look at it.

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MarkCole
The only way to definetly know if it will be better for SEO is to test it. I
would say go for it. If anything it will at least simplify your URL structure
and make it easier to navigate.

Remember when you update it, to update your sitemap and (re)submit it to
google[0].

[0] -
[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/)

~~~
tixocloud
Thanks. How quickly do you think I'd be able to notice the changes?

~~~
MarkCole
I think you might, it certainly can't hurt. As others have mentioned, there
are other things you should consider too, such as reducing page complexity,
load time, and the like.

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tixocloud
Thanks for all your thoughts. I'll keep investigating - really determined to
beat those content farming websites.

I've also noticed that although it's listed in the sitemap, when I ran the
main page through a checker, it doesn't seem like the products page is linked
to any other page.

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eecks
Do you rank the same way in Bing?

