SEO

Google’s John Mueller Shares Tips For Simplifying Site Structure

Before making changes to your website structure, you should consider the impact it can have on your search rankings and user experience.

Google search attorney John Mueller recently shared valuable advice on the matter in a Reddit thread.

With his recommendations, you can learn how to simplify your website structure without affecting its SEO.

Read on to learn more about Mueller’s advice and how it can help you achieve your website streamlining goals.

Removing subdirectories – good or bad idea?

One Reddit user asked about simplifying their site structure by pulling in the /fr and /de subdirectories.

Instead, they will direct all European traffic to the /eu subdirectory.

They ask if this is a good or bad idea and seek information about its impact on SEO and rankings.

Mueller’s recommendation

Mueller advises against pulling subdirectories and converting everything to /eu, saying that it’s too much work to earn nothing.

Instead, it suggests moving the “/” (en-us) into the “/us” folder, which allows for a more precise separation of parts. This way, “/” is all US, “/fr/*” is all French, and so on.

Additionally, he recommends adding hreflang on all pages, not just sections, to pages that get confused by visitors to the wrong country.

My recommendation is not to convert /de & /fr to /eu /de or /eu /fr. There is no SEO advantage you get from that, and site moves like this are a lot of work. If anything, I might consider moving /(en-us) in the “/us” folder. This way you have a clearer separation of the parts (“/us/“is all US,” /fr/*” is all French, etc.). It will make tracking a little easier, and easier for search engines to understand the sections (vs. going /fr to /eu/fr, which makes the sections harder to understand).

Also, hreflang is done on a per page basis, so you can do this on all pages. You mentioned it as partitions, and you’re probably already doing it right, so this is just for completeness. If you’re not doing this on all pages, I’d consider checking your stats for the most rambunctious pages (wrong country visitors), and at least adding them in there. This is probably mostly your home page, so if you’re just doing it there, you’re probably getting a lot of hreflang value already.”

Importance of X-Default

Mueller highlights the importance of x-default, especially when doing geo-IP redirects.

His advice is to make sure that the root home page redirects to the appropriate version and that it is specified as x-default for the home page group.

Without doing this, to Google, the root home page can look like a separate page from the others.

Setting the root homepage as x-default will avoid this problem and allow Google to see it as the default for certain countries.

And…if you do any of this and automatically redirect “/” (only the root homepage) to the appropriate version, you have to make sure it is specified as x-default for the homepage group. Without doing that, it can look to Google like “/” page separate from other pages.

(Edit to just clarify on the last part… – this is specifically if your/us is in the US, and you’re geo-IP address forwarding, which I generally don’t recommend)

If “/” (only that page) redirects users in the US to “/us”, and you have hreflang via /us, /fr with x-default set to /us, what could happen is that Google sees “/ being an English page, it also recognizes /us, /fr as two separate pages, and then displays both “/” and “/ (one of them” in the search results. You can avoid this by setting “/” as the default x- (even if it’s redirecting), then Google will see “/” as the default “/us” for the US, and “/fr” for France.

It also means you can’t use “/eu” as x-default (there can only be one # Highlander #xdefault), but you can still use that by defining it as hreflang for a set of countries you have in common (you can specify multiple countries per URL). In the end, you’ll have “/” = x-default , “/us” for the US, “/fr” for France, “/eu” for a bunch of countries, and a redirect from “/” to the best version.

This is all for the home page only, and I wouldn’t do that to any of the other pages of the site because they are too complex and hard to manage, and because the home page is probably the page that gets the most impressions on search.”

More on geo-redirects

Regarding geo-redirects, Mueller advises using them only on the home page of the site and not on any of the other pages.

This helps simplify the process for users who type in a domain name to find the closest match for their site and allows them to easily click on a different country to access that version of the website.

There are alternative options to geo-redirects, such as dynamically changing the homepage language, but this approach can add more complexity to the website.

Another option is to use the country picker on the homepage, but this can negatively affect usability, especially if there are many countries to choose from.

In summary

If you want to simplify the structure of your website, it is best not to do this by changing subdirectories.

In this case, the website owner wanted to convert /de and /fr to /eu /de or /eu /fr.

Instead, Mueller said they should consider moving “/*” (en-us) to the “/us” folder, adding hreflang on all pages, and specifying the root homepage as the x-default of the homepage group.

Why?

This will help avoid confusion among search engines and make it easier for them to understand the different sections of the site.


Featured image: GoodStudio/Shutterstock

source: reddit

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