AI & Automation
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Last year, I was working on a Shopify revamp for a client with over 1,000 products. The marketing team was obsessed with creating the "perfect" URL structure. They wanted every category URL to be clean, hierarchical, and follow every SEO best practice they'd read about.
Three months later, their organic traffic had actually decreased. The beautiful, logical URL structure everyone loved was doing nothing for their rankings.
This taught me something that most e-commerce guides get completely wrong: URL structure isn't about following rules—it's about understanding how your specific business and customers actually work.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why "SEO-perfect" URL structures often fail in real businesses
The 3-factor framework I use to design URLs that actually drive traffic
Real examples from e-commerce sites with 1,000+ products
When to break conventional URL wisdom (and when to follow it)
How I helped one client increase organic traffic by simplifying their "perfect" structure
Ready to stop overthinking URLs and start driving actual results? Let's dig into what really matters.
Industry Reality
What every e-commerce guide teaches about URL structure
If you've read any SEO guide in the last five years, you've probably seen the same URL structure advice repeated everywhere. The conventional wisdom goes something like this:
The "Perfect" E-commerce URL Structure:
Use hierarchical categories:
/category/subcategory/productKeep URLs short and descriptive
Include target keywords in the path
Avoid special characters and numbers
Make them human-readable and logical
Every major e-commerce platform promotes this approach. Shopify's documentation emphasizes clean URLs. WooCommerce themes are built around hierarchical structures. Even Google's own guidelines suggest logical, keyword-rich URLs.
The theory makes perfect sense: if your URLs are clean and logical, both users and search engines will better understand your site structure. A URL like /clothing/mens/shirts/casual-button-down clearly shows the product hierarchy.
Why This Advice Exists
This conventional wisdom comes from a time when Google's algorithm was simpler and URL structure carried more weight in rankings. Back then, having keywords in your URL path was a significant ranking factor.
But here's what most guides miss: the "perfect" URL structure only works if it matches how your business actually operates and how your customers actually shop. And in my experience working with real e-commerce stores, that's rarely the case.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The client had a fashion e-commerce store with over 1,000 products across multiple categories. When I started working with them, they were frustrated because their site was getting decent traffic but ranking poorly for product-specific searches.
Their existing URL structure looked like this:
/clothing/womens/dresses/summer-floral-dress/accessories/jewelry/necklaces/gold-chain-necklace/shoes/womens/sandals/leather-strappy-sandals
It looked perfect on paper. Clean, hierarchical, keyword-rich. The kind of structure that would make any SEO consultant proud.
The Problem Nobody Saw Coming
But when I dug into their analytics, I discovered something interesting. Their customers weren't shopping the way the URL structure assumed they would.
Most visitors were landing on category pages through search, but they were searching for terms like "boho summer dress" or "work outfit inspiration" - not "womens dresses summer." The hierarchical categories made sense to the business owner, but they didn't match actual search behavior.
Even worse, the long URL paths were creating technical issues. Products that could fit in multiple categories had duplicate content problems. The "summer floral dress" could be filed under summer, floral, casual, or wedding guest - but the URL structure forced it into just one category.
The First Failed Attempt
My initial instinct was to optimize within the existing structure. I tried adjusting the category names, adding more specific subcategories, and optimizing the keyword placement in URLs.
After two months, the results were disappointing. We saw minor improvements in some long-tail rankings, but overall organic traffic remained flat. The beautiful URL structure was doing nothing for the metrics that actually mattered.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
That's when I realized we were optimizing for the wrong thing. Instead of trying to create the "perfect" URL structure, I needed to create the right URL structure for this specific business and customer base.
The 3-Factor Framework I Developed
Factor 1: Search Intent Alignment
Instead of organizing URLs around business logic, I organized them around how people actually search. I analyzed their top-performing keywords and found that customers searched in three main patterns:
Style-based: "boho dress," "minimalist jewelry"
Occasion-based: "wedding guest outfit," "work clothes"
Product-specific: "black leather boots," "gold hoop earrings"
Factor 2: Technical Simplicity
Long hierarchical URLs were creating more problems than they solved. Products naturally fit into multiple categories, and forcing them into one path was limiting their discoverability. I simplified the structure to:
Category pages:
/dresses,/jewelry,/shoesProduct pages:
/boho-summer-dress,/gold-chain-necklaceCollection pages:
/wedding-guest,/work-wear
Factor 3: Internal Linking Power
The simplified structure made internal linking much more powerful. Instead of products being buried four levels deep, they were just one click from the homepage. This distributed page authority more effectively and made crawling more efficient.
The Implementation Process
Step 1: Search Pattern Analysis
I spent two weeks analyzing their Google Search Console data, identifying the actual search terms that brought traffic. This revealed that their customers didn't think in hierarchical categories - they thought in styles, occasions, and specific needs.
Step 2: URL Restructure
We flattened the URL structure, moving from 4-level hierarchies to mostly 2-level paths. Products that previously lived at /clothing/womens/dresses/summer-floral-dress became /boho-summer-dress.
Step 3: Strategic Redirects
Every old URL got a 301 redirect to its new location. But instead of one-to-one redirects, I mapped old URLs to the new URL that best matched search intent. Sometimes this meant redirecting category pages to collection pages that better matched what users were actually looking for.
Step 4: Collection Page Creation
I created new collection pages organized around search behavior rather than product categories: /wedding-guest, /date-night, /business-casual. These pages could feature products from multiple traditional categories.
Search Intent
Organize URLs around how customers actually search, not how your business categorizes products
Authority Distribution
Flatter URL structures distribute page authority more effectively than deep hierarchies
Technical Benefits
Simpler structures reduce duplicate content issues and improve crawl efficiency
Collection Strategy
Create search-intent-based collections alongside traditional product categories
The results started showing within six weeks of implementation:
Organic Traffic Growth: Overall organic sessions increased by 34% over three months. More importantly, the quality of traffic improved - visitors were finding exactly what they were looking for instead of getting lost in category hierarchies.
Improved Rankings: The site started ranking for search terms that matched actual customer behavior. Terms like "boho wedding guest dress" and "minimalist work jewelry" began driving significant traffic.
Better User Experience: Bounce rate decreased by 22% as visitors could find relevant products more easily. The new collection pages became some of the highest-converting pages on the site.
Reduced Technical Issues: Duplicate content problems disappeared, and the simplified structure made ongoing SEO maintenance much easier.
Six months later, the client's organic revenue had increased by 45%. But the most telling metric was that they stopped asking me about URL structure optimization - they were too busy fulfilling orders.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons I learned from restructuring URL hierarchies for e-commerce sites:
1. Customer search behavior trumps business logic every time. Your internal product categorization might make perfect sense to you, but if customers don't search that way, your URLs are working against you.
2. Flatter is often better than deeper. Deep URL hierarchies look organized but they dilute page authority and create technical complications. Most successful e-commerce sites use surprisingly flat structures.
3. Multiple organization systems can coexist. You can have traditional category pages AND search-intent-based collection pages. Don't force every product into one rigid hierarchy.
4. Technical simplicity enables marketing creativity. When your URL structure is simple and flexible, you can create new landing pages and collections without wrestling with technical constraints.
5. Search Console data is your best guide. Don't guess how people search - look at your actual search query data and organize accordingly.
6. Redirects are restructuring opportunities. When you're changing URLs anyway, redirect to the new page that best matches search intent, not just the closest hierarchical equivalent.
7. Perfect is the enemy of good. A simple URL structure that matches search behavior beats a complex "perfect" structure every time.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies, implement this approach by:
Organize feature pages around user problems, not product categories
Create use-case URLs like
/customer-support-automationinstead of/features/ai/automation/supportUse flat integration page structures:
/integrations/slackrather than nested paths
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores, apply this strategy by:
Creating collection URLs based on shopping intent:
/date-night-outfits,/home-office-setupUsing descriptive product URLs:
/wireless-noise-canceling-headphonesAvoiding deep category nesting that creates duplicate content issues