SEO - Url Structure With Empty Folder Content — How to ship it — Costs &...

distro_dave

A competitor in our niche uses the url structure for their website like this example and it ranks #1 for this catergory plus 200+ others; example.com/shoes/chicago If you remove the /chicago/ parameter, the url becomes example.com/shoes/ and displays a 404 error. I was of the understanding that Google liked a structure such as below for preventing empty folder content and to promote rank authority; example.com/chicago/shoes...

Originally asked by redmacgirl on Stack Exchange (webmasters) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Variant 54.

Variant 5829.

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

Use the visible url structure that feels normal for the user. Use the internal folder structure that works for organising your content. Then map one to the other with rewrites. SEO depends on too many things, the url is a tiny fraction, if at all. On my sites example.com/shoes would probably redirect to something useful for the user, but probably still return a 404. Using a custom error page.

Full answer by Rohit Gupta: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/a/145404 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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