URL Structure Guidance
Hello!
I'm rolling out a new website that will need to have good SEO search results and was wondering if anyone could give me some quick URL structure suggestions for https://www.homepropartners.com/
We need good structure for "City, State, Zip, Category, Profile Listing, Skills/Tags" plus any countless combinations of those. What is the best approach?
Any help would be appreciated.
Hi Micah,
this is a tricky questions and it also depends a lot on your goals and monetisation methods.
You mentioned you want to give a very deep level structure with city, state, zip, category, profile listing, etc. With this method the risk is to get a unlimited number of pages that look very similar between them, with the result to get duplicate content at scale, meaning your organic traffic can suffer.
My advice is to identify your main categories based on skills, state, etc and create your page based on the search intent you identified for them (2k words, directory, reviews, etc).
Once the main structure is done, identify the lower level pages, the ones that are perhaps more local and longer tail keywords.
A good starting point is also having a look at your biggest competitors:
homeadvisor.com
angieslist.com
networx.com
ecc
and identify what's the best approach to you. They are established brands with almost unlimited budget, while you're just starting out. You've the "freedom" of agility but you need to be smart and not compete on the same level, as it would take you a lot of time and money to stay on business.
A final note: get the help of an SEO professional, as soon as I got on your site I noticed that your main and most important links are not actually HTML links but rather JavaScript ones. I'm referring to the filtering system on the home page. See State > Colorado
Competing with giants isn't easy and you should be smart, but your technical SEO should be exceptional in the first place.
Hope it helps and good luck!
Francesco, thank you for your reply...
Thanks again!
2-3. The competitors I mentioned are the biggest and aren't your direct competitor (just like a new generic ecommerce site's competitor isn't Amazon), they've their own history, funding, brand, etc. You should be aware of the competition, but also develop your own strategy that can take advantages of other aspects they don't cover or unique angles. It isn't easy, but it's the only option to not directly compete with giants.
Pages and links should be following the standard HTML, Google as well as other search engine are very rarely able to identify this kind of links, and even when they can you don't get the same value as it was a real link.
Talk to him as soon as possible, it's better to start well rather than do the job multiple times.
And enjoy your journey!
Great, thanks!