Please Vote - Best Structure for new directory

[philiporchard]

Am building out a new directory across UK. Meeting developers this eve. We will be discussing URL structure. Would really appreciate thoughts.

Option 1

City page for all plumbers
www.plumb123.com/cardiff/

Specific Area page for all Plumbers
www.plumb123.com/cardiff/canton/

City page for specialist plumbers
www.plumb123.com/cardiff-central-heating/

Area page for specialist plumbers
www.plumb123.com/cardiff-central-heating/canton/


Option 2

City page for all plumbers
www.plumb123.com/cardiff/

Specific Area page for all Plumbers
www.plumb123.com/Cardiff-canton/

City page for specialist plumbers
www.plumb123.com/cardiff/central-heating/

Area page for specialist plumbers
www.plumb123.com/cardiff-canton/central-heating/

Many thanks in advance!

 

[khalid]

I would go with domain.com/area/company-name

However, what happens if Company A does three areas?

 

[retired_member36]

I voted option 1, looks cleaner

 

[philiporchard]

Thanks.

More views please.

I found it hard to get hold of directories that were niche, but also covered the whole of the UK.

 

[martin-s]

I would make both the below accessible and canonical the second to the first:

/topic/county/town/locality/company
/county/town/locality/topic/company

In general, more people search for "thing area" than "area thing"

 

[julian]

Thanks Phil, you've reminded me to dev one of my domains that was lying unused that is perfect for this thetradedirectory.co.uk

county/town/locality/company - deeper is spammy

 

[MOGmartin]

Basically, as flat as possible - having said that fixating on the folder structure is like worrying about where to buy 35mm film for a digital camera. Its just not relevant.

The questions you should be asking yourself are:

how am I going to have good, unique, helpful content on every page of the site?
how am I going to link to these pages without diluting to much pagerank.

 

[alex2013]

I voted for Option 1 - it's the most popular URL structure I've seen. Anyway, the difference isn't that big

 

[philiporchard]

We've gone for:


Home:
hairdressers.couk

City:
hairdressers.couk/cardiff/

Nationwide Sub-Category
hairdressers.couk/mobile-hairdressers/

City + Sub-Category
hairdressers.couk/cardiff/mobile-hairdressers/

City + Area
hairdressers.couk/cardiff/riverside/

City + Area + Sub Category
hairdressers.couk/cardiff/mobile-hairdressers/riverside/

It's about as clean as we could get them. Thanks for the input.

 

[alex2013]

No problem, philiporchard.
It was an interesting question, I never thought that detailed when creating a website.
Good luck!

 

[philiporchard]

No problem, philiporchard.
It was an interesting question, I never thought that detailed when creating a website.
Good luck!

We've got 28,000 businesses to add to the website, so want to make sure we get it right!