URL Restructuring Boosts SEO and User Experience for CAS Hire

Alba SEO Services helped CAS Hire enhance its website’s SEO by restructuring product categories, products and blog post URLs. This optimisation improved search rankings and user experience, contributing to increased online visibility and customer engagement. The URL restructuring involved simplifying the navigation by removing unnecessary elements and streamlining product categories, which made the site easier for both users and search engines to navigate.

About CAS Hire

CAS Hire is a leading air conditioning and equipment hire company in the UK, specialising in providing climate control solutions to commercial and residential clients. With a wide range of products, including portable air conditioners, heaters, and air purifiers, CAS Hire needed to improve its online visibility to reach a broader audience and drive more enquiries through organic search.

CAS Hire has been our client for a number of years and our onsite optimisation and link building grew their traffic significantly. However, one thing that we felt was hampering further growth was the URL structure of this e-commerce site. The site is quite old but has been revamped with a new theme, and images, and we undertook a content review. However, the URL structure was never optimised due to the potential impact changing the URL structure would have on the website’s rankings.

What was wrong with the URL structure?

• The existing URL structure was not optimised for SEO, making it difficult for search engines to effectively crawl and index key pages.
• The lack of a clear URL hierarchy resulted in missed opportunities for ranking product pages and posts.

For example, the refrigerant dehumidifier category was located on this URL:

• Category URL: https://www.cas-hire.co.uk/products/dehumidifiers/refrigerant-dehumidifiers/

However, the individual products were located on entirely separate URLs, disconnected from their relevant category:

Product URL: https://www.cas-hire.co.uk/shop/dehumidifiers/refrigerant-dehumidifiers/woods-mrd-10-dehumidifier-hire/

This caused confusion for both users and search engines, making it difficult to navigate the site and properly associate products with their categories.

Why now?

We saw significant untapped potential that the existing URL structure was holding back. The owners agreed to our suggested changes of streamlining the URLS accepting the possibility of disruption during a typically quieter time of year.

Alba SEO Services suggested:

• URL Restructuring: Streamlining the URL structure for product categories, individual products, and blog posts to improve both user experience and search engine optimisation (SEO). By placing products within the same folder structure as their respective categories and removing the word “product” from category URLs, we created a more intuitive and cleaner URL hierarchy. This not only made it easier for search engines to crawl and index pages but also enhanced user navigation, helping users quickly understand the location and relevance of products within the site.
• Blog Post URLs: We removed the embedded date from blog post URLs, making the content appear more timeless and evergreen. This helps improve the perception of relevance, allowing posts to remain valuable and less tied to a specific time, which benefits both SEO and user engagement.
• Internal Linking: After changing the URLs, we updated the internal links across the website to ensure a seamless navigation experience and to pass link equity to important pages.
• 301 Redirects: To preserve existing rankings and avoid broken links, we ensured that 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new optimised ones were in place, ensuring no loss of traffic during the transition.

After the URL structure optimisation, CAS Hire experienced significant improvements:

• Ranking Improvements: Several key product categories and blog posts saw improved rankings for targeted keywords, moving from lower positions to the first page of Google search results.
• Increased Organic Traffic: Organic traffic to the website’s key product category and product pages increased by 30 %, with higher click-through rates due to clearer, more relevant URLs.
• Improved Crawlability: The optimized URL structure enhanced the crawlability of the website, leading to more frequent indexing by search engines and better overall visibility.

By focusing on a simple yet impactful change in the URL structure, we helped CAS Hire achieve better rankings and increase organic traffic. This case highlights the importance of well-structured URLs in improving SEO performance and driving business growth.

Want to find out how your business can benefit from SEO? Alba SEO Services provides SEO, PPC, Web Design and Social Media services for businesses across Edinburgh, Glasgow, Scotland and the UK. Contact us today to find out how we can help to get your website ranking in the search engines and boost your online presence.