Google's John Mueller said that some SEOs over focus on URL structure and that if your context from your pages aren't clear, then no URL structure can fix that.
John wrote on LinkedIn:
Often SEOs over-focus on URL structure (imo) -- if the context of your pages isn't clear from the ... text on the page, then the URL structure isn't really going to fix that.
What advice did he give for URL structure for SEO?
- Avoid making unnecessary URL structure changes (because changes will affect SEO at least temporarily, it takes time for search engines to recrawl & reprocess all affected pages), pick something that can last for a long time
- Primarily think about users & about how you want to track performance (URL structures are great for grouping URLs for analytics, conversion rates, etc. -- not directly SEO, but for monitoring how well SEO is working for you).
John added, "Anyway, Google generally (*) wouldn't care. Make a useful structure. Make it easy for you to monitor. Make it helpful for users, if you want (do people even look at URLs? I assume most users don't nowadays.)"
When does structure of your URLs matter? When you have adult content on portions of your site (we covered this before). John said on LinkedIn, "(*) the "generally" ... an exception that I can think of is if an affected part of the site is treated significantly different than the rest of the site. For example, if that folder is where all of the safe-search filtered content is located, then moving it around can make it harder for the safe-search system to understand your new site structure. I don't think that's something most sites need to consider, but it's helpful if you're looking for an "it depends"."
Google has often recommended not to change URLs for SEO purposes, here is our past coverage:
- Google Really Wants You To Avoid Changing URLs Just For SEO Reasons
- Google: Avoid Change URLs Unless You Really Have To
- Google: Don't Change Your URLs For SEO Purposes
- Google: Don't Change URLs When Replacing Old Content With New Content
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
