Would you shorten this url, and if so how?

[mr_w]

I designed the structure of my website way before I even thought about SEO. I run a website that requires me to categorize articles is somewhat deep nested categories so an example url would be as follows

http://www.yakangler.com/articles/news/new-products/boats/item/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna

Would you shorten the url to somethign like this?

http://www.yakangler.com/a/n/np/b/item/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna

If so how would you manage the redirects I'm unsure how to add a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file that wouldn't require me to add one for every single article. Could I do it with a rule that recognizes only the middle part of the url and redirect it accordingly?

Thanks for any advice you might have!

[NakulGoyal]

I agree one hundred percent with Irving and Joseph. I would also ask you how your site is ranking and how old is the site and these URLs. You loose the age aspect of the URLs when you change them. You do gain the advantage and that's what you have to measure, the risk vs reward. Also, do you have inbound links / deep links to these pages ? And I am pretty sure you have the 301s in mind, I thought I'll mention, just in case.

I hope this helps.

[mr_w]

Thanks for the good info Irving and Joseph, I wish I would have thought about SEO when initially building the site! I guess I'm going to look into a component to handle the redirects.

[jlane9]

Great answer Irving,

I agree,

You don't want to go too many categories deep...

www.your-site.com/category-keyword1/category-keyword2/main-content-article-here

Try to naturally fit your keywords in the URL.

I find helps with ranking potential.

Because of seo best practices i like to keep my URL lengths within Seomoz  recommendations of below 115 characters.

[irvingw]

nope, you are still too many folder deep and your example is worse because the folder names are now meaningless.

http://www.yakangler.com/articles/news/new-products/boats/item/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna

this is slightly better:

http://www.yakangler.com/articles/products/boats/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna

this is even better if you can swing it

http://www.yakangler.com/boats/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna-boat

a) articles is not needed

b) new products won't always be new

c) boats is a legit category

d) item is not needed

e) get "boat" in your filename if you are trying to rank for that term

You can handle redirects through automation if you are using a cms like wordpress