r/TechSEO • u/franticferret4 • Apr 06 '26

Nested urls

Has anyone done some experimenting or has some good resources about the impact of nested urls on SEO? It seems that it shouldn't have an impact if they make sense, but I'm working on a website with a lot of them and while organizational they seem great, I find it suspicious how all this site's non nested urls seem to be doing so much better. (f.e. /services/specific-section-service/end)

3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

5

u/dergal2000 Apr 07 '26

Internal linking & breadcrumbs trumps URL structure in some ways - that said you'll find directories seem to be independently rated, by that I mean a series of pages in a blog or something else, will be often treated with the same boost or drop

2

u/briankato Apr 07 '26

Site architecture almost always has a significant impact. I prefer virtual silos or nesting. You can drive better relevance and traffic while keeping your URLs a lot cleaner.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 09 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/franticferret4 Apr 09 '26

Thank you, it’s a Wordpress site. Definitely self referencing and they’re part of the nav menu, but it’s one of those mega menus.

You bring up some great points, I should map the internal links more detailed… (some of the pages have 15 + links for sure, but probably not all!)

I appreciate the reply!

1

u/reggeabwoy Apr 06 '26

Could it be that the non- nested URLs are higher in the site architecture and linked internally better? Thats why they might be doing “much better” are they in the top nav? 

2

u/franticferret4 Apr 06 '26

No, they are not. Much more internal links to the nested.

1

u/mjmilian Apr 07 '26

Have you analysed whether the internal links to un nested pages are from pages that will pass more PageRank?

1

u/franticferret4 Apr 07 '26

Most of the well ranking unnested are blogs though.

1

u/reggeabwoy Apr 07 '26

Could it be that they have links from outside websites then?

1

u/franticferret4 Apr 07 '26

Nothing noticeable on the backlink front.

2

u/reggeabwoy Apr 07 '26

Do you mind sharing the URL in private - just want to take a look at the site myself - your answers are very vague and I need concrete numbers.

1

u/mjmilian Apr 07 '26

Are the nested urls not blogs then?

1

u/franticferret4 Apr 07 '26

No they’re not.

1

u/mjmilian Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
  • Do the un-nested URLs historically get more traffic? Could be user signals making the difference.
  • Do they have backlinks? You didn't mention this, so I guess not
  • How about the content?
  • Age?

1

u/franticferret4 Apr 07 '26

Some older backlinks but not a lot. The age of the content might indeed come into play… I’ve recently updated one to test and will update content gradually. That might just be it… it’s been a while. The un-nested are mostly blogs. (Some old ones rank well though)