website logical / physical structure

Forum Moderators: phranque

Message Too Old, No Replies

website logical / physical structure

website structure, multiple categories

alias

3:38 am on Jan 27, 2008 (gmt 0)

hi,

the issue:

the plan of the website is to store all items with a structure like domain.tld/items/title (titles are unique) - that's the static part of the website.

each item can be tagged (categorized) with multiple tags. and I want to be able to view the items belonging to one or another tag using such links:
domain.tld/tags/tag1
domain.tld/tags/tag2

the item links in these tag listings would of course lead to domain.tld/items/title - my concern is the fact the the item can be tagged by both tag1 and tag2.

what's the practice nowadays? is it ok both domain.tld/tags/tag1 and domain.tld/tags/tag2 to have the same item listed, which eventually goes to domain.tld/items/title?

cheers,
Margin

p.s. tried searching webmasterworld for the answer to my question - but couldn't find nothing more precise. sorry if this has been discussed already.

Marcia

3:10 pm on Jan 27, 2008 (gmt 0)

Not really sure what you're asking, but it isn't about logical domains vs. physical domains.

If you're referring to using "tags" for articles or blog posts, what you're suggesting sounds like putting the same content on all the "tag" pages it's about, like in several different categories, each with different filenames? That's called duplicate content.

One content page = one URL is how it should be, else use noindex,nofollow.

lammert

1:32 am on Jan 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

What you are describing is a standard website structure. It is like a blog, where each post can be reached via multiple paths, i.e. the calendar, categories and tags assigned to each post etc.

alias

11:08 am on Jan 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

yes lammert, thank you, I understand that. but my concern is if I have, let's say, 20 tags for an item - is this ok? that'll be loads of internal links from various tag pages to a single item.

I don't think there's another way to do it.
I just don't want to overdo it ;)

phranque

12:04 pm on Jan 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

regardless of your linking you want to be sure that each unique page has only one url.
if example.com/tags/tag1 and example.com/tags/tag2 point to the same content, you will start having problems related to duplicate content.

lammert

12:13 pm on Jan 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

If the tags or on-topic, there is nothing wrong with it. Search engines love on-topic cross links between pages on one site. You only need to make sure that your software generates your tags like links, rather than copies of the original page, but I think this is already the case if I read this quote from your post:

the item links in these tag listings would of course lead to domain.tld/items/title

alias

1:16 pm on Jan 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

thanks everyone, that's what I wanted to know - how much search engines love related internal crosslinks :)

I really appreciate your help and opinion,
Martin

lammert

2:29 pm on Jan 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

Every search engine having Wikipedia articles in the top of their SERPs loves internal cross links ;)

alias

3:09 pm on Jan 28, 2008 (gmt 0)

ok, another question then. is there a difference if the unique item links look like domain.tld/items/item_title or just domain.tld/item_title? I don't want to put any additional weight on the word items - but if it will be in every link leading to an item, it will have some weight, will it?
should I replace the word items with viagra and be the first in SERPS for viagra? or should I just use the already mentioned domain.tld/item_title structure?

I know these may be small and unnoticable (and probably stupid) thoughts, but I know everything influences everything, no matter how silly it may look.

thanks,
Martin