eCommerce URL Structure.

Just want to get some quick feedback and best practice tips from SEOs that have worked on large eCommerce projects. I have a buddy who drop ships baseball gear, he asked me about his URL structure. I gave him my thoughts, but wasn’t sure if it’s “best”. Figured I’d get some input from you guys on WordPress and Woocommerce structure.

url.com/c/baseball-bats/ (main cat, keyword target generic “baseball bats”)
url.com/c/baseball-bats/metal-baseball-bats/ (keyword target “metal baseball bats”)
url.com/c/baseball-bats/wood-baseball-bats/ (keyword target “wood baseball bats”)
url.com/c/baseball-bats/youth-baseball-bats/ (keyword target “youth baseball bats”)
url.com/c/baseball-bats/senior-baseball-bats/ (keyword target “senior baseball bats”)

Does it make sense to structure that way, or:

url.com/c/baseball-bats/ (main cat, keyword target generic “baseball bats”)
url.com/c/baseball-bats/metal/ (keyword target “metal baseball bats”)
url.com/c/baseball-bats/wood/ (keyword target “wood baseball bats”)
url.com/c/baseball-bats/youth/ (keyword target “youth baseball bats”)
url.com/c/baseball-bats/senior/ (keyword target “senior baseball bats”)

Which structure is better?

My only concern is that there’s going to be a “youth” and “senior” for every type of gear. If they aren’t under the same category, would they still conflict in naming? I mean /cat1/senior and /cat2/senior be an issue?

Thanks in advance.

Either of those URL structures should be fine both in terms of usability/web development and onpage SEO.

It's fine to have both url.com/baseball-bats/senior and url.com/football-helmets/senior. It's actually fairly common to have files with the same name in different directories. Ex:

• For example, it's common to have one .htaccess file at the root level that defines rules that apply to the entire domain and then to have additional .htaccess files (also titled .htaccess) stored in child directories to create rules that apply only to those inner directories (and their children).
• You can do the same thing with index.html files. website.com by default will show what's stored at website.com/index.html. Same for inner directories. website.com/somedirectory is by default going to show you website.com/somedirectory/index.html. There's no naming conflict here, either, even though both files are titled "index.html"

Makes sense.

So, there’s no conflict having “baseball-bats” repeated twice in a URL?

url.com/c/baseball-bats/baseball-bats-senior/

RealGibson said:

Makes sense.

So, there’s no conflict having “baseball-bats” repeated twice in a URL?

url.com/c/baseball-bats/baseball-bats-senior/

Click to expand...

I personally think this is not optimal, google give more weights on the first word more than the last word on page url
If your niche focus on baseball things, i think you dont need to mention it everytime on every category of the product

I was kind of thinking the short version was better, too.

RealGibson said:

So, there’s no conflict having “baseball-bats” repeated twice in a URL?

Click to expand...

Having it in the URL is fine. I'm guessing the concern you're having is about keyword stuffing and/or over-optimizing the page. If you're also shoving the word "baseball bats" into every paragraph, heading, and in generally raising your keyword density to obscene levels, then the URL could be contribute to that problem. But it's not inherently bad and isn't inherently over-optimizing/keyword stuffing.

MatthewGraham said:

Having it in the URL is fine. I'm guessing the concern you're having is about keyword stuffing and/or over-optimizing the page. If you're also shoving the word "baseball bats" into every paragraph, heading, and in generally raising your keyword density to obscene levels, then the URL could be contribute to that problem. But it's not inherently bad and isn't inherently over-optimizing/keyword stuffing.

Click to expand...

No over-optimization issues. Each page doesn’t have any content yet. Obviously it’s planned, but not from a keyword stuffing perspective. At most, the H1 might match the product category /baseball-bats-senior/ with a mention no more than once in the paragraph. In the end, wasn’t sure if the long version was more SEO efficient than the short version or if the long version was using the keyword(s) too many times in the URL.

The second option would be more professional and less spammy, you can have full keywords in the title but the entire link should ideally not have keywords repeated multiple times.

E-commerce url structure for best guide to you can check Moz site.

The shorter version looks better and quite concise. But I guess if you use the longer one, you have to avoid overstuffing of keyword on the page itself.