Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Post url not matching with post title ( wordpress)
-
I have this site called searchoflife.com on which I have noticed the post urls are not matching with the post title. For Example:Post Title - A Dialogue With NaturePost URL - http://searchoflife.com/dialogue-nature-2013-09-12 Words like 'A' and 'with' are not present in the post URL. This has been the trend since a few days. After investigating I found out that it was due to my plugin SEO ultimate which is actually creating post slugs automatically for the post urls. So my question is whether it is advisable to use post slugs instead of the full post url. Does it affect the SERPS for my site?
-
Hello Again,
Last night I searched a few keywords and noticed a post which is ranking on the first place at first position. Now this post is having the post slug instead of the entire URL. Here is the keyword
liberation from innate darkness - 1st position
empathy is the liberation - 5th position
Post Title - Empathy is the liberation from Innate Darkness
Post URL - http://searchoflife.com/empathy-liberation-innate-darkness-2013-09-02
Also I checked on my localhost after disabling the slug optimizer. It seems that wordpress is automatically redirecting to the new URL so it won't be a problem to change the older post slug URLS yo complete URLs. But I feel I won't touch those posts which are already having good rankings with post slugs. Any suggestions?
-
I haven't thoroughly checked the newer posts as such. Unfortunately when I noticed this change it had already started and I thought it to be an update of Wordpress 3.6. Wordpress it seems has its own post slug since quite sometime. But incidently the update of SEO ultimate plugin too coincided with the wordpress update. So I wasn't sure. Later on another site I noticed the same type of behaviour which was using SEO Yoast plugin. So I don't know why all the top SEO plugins are automatically switching to this. I did search on Google regarding this but haven't found a comprehensive answer.
-
How are your rankings and more importantly traffic generated by these posts doing? You are right you need to be sure before taking this action and to be honest I think there is a good chance that the difference will be negligible even though I think we both agree that we would prefer the full post title URL. If we strip it back to a very base level then you are getting your most important keywords in the URL which is helping your page relevancy so why make this extra work for yourself.
-
I too am not that comfortable with the post slugs personally. But now that there are already a decent amount of posts (More than 50) in that format which are indexed on Google. If I do disable the post slug option I would then have to change all my urls to the post title (i.e if it really does hamper SERPS), then will have to redirect all those URLS to the new URLs. So need to be sure enough to take this action.
Also one of my posts with the keyword 'astrobiological approach' when searched on Google ranks first in the search results. But if you notice that particular url is having the entire post title. However I'm not sure whether the URL itself had a role in the ranking. Please guide me. Thanks.
-
Hi - I tend to always set the urls to be the full post title. You will also notice that the likes of Moz does this as well if you look at this post for instance. Your plugin is trying to be clever as there is thought that having too many hyphens and words in your url will dilute the effectiveness of your main keywords once you start going over 4 or 5 words, depending where the keywords occur in the title. I believe Matt Cutts addressed this in a webmaster video many moons ago and I think the main conclusion was that having too many hyphens in your URL may look a little spammy to searchers and put them off clicking on your result in the SERPs. However nowadays this is a common practice and I don''t think this has negative impact on click through rates from the SERPs. If I were you I would look at my URL matching my post title personally. Small words such as A and with help to add context to your page contents in my opinion.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
titles length, URL length and meta descriptions on a subdomain effecting SEO on main domain?
Hi all, I am currently evaluating areas for optimization on my main domain. When doing this, Moz has identified multiple titles and urls that should be shortened and missing meta descriptions on my subdomain (a help center of sorts). As far as I am aware, we have not set up any "no-index" rules for this subdomain. Are these items affecting SEO on my main domain? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | annegretwidmer
Kasey0 -
Commas in title tags
Hello Guys, Thanks in advance for all who can help me with this I am helping a dinnerware company with their SEO. I told them to change their ambiguous title tags for more specific ones. However, they opted to create some title tags with 2 or three keywords separated by commas. I have attached an excel image illustrating their new title tags.. My question is, will this format be a problem with Google--penalties? The questionable title tags are highlighted in light orange. Thanks! lHH92
On-Page Optimization | | HectorCortes0 -
Home page keyword in url
I have been looking into SEO for a few weeks now trying to perfect a homepage. Going through various sources on MOZ, and other examples out there on the internet, I keep seeing that you should have your keyword in the URL of the page. The homepage is the page most people want to rank the highest in google searches, however, you cannot put the keyword in the URL as most home page URLs are simply /. Should I actually make the home like this: www.example.com/key-word-example? I would imagine this would not be the normal for many users and would seem like it's not the home page.
On-Page Optimization | | Matthew_smart0 -
Exact keyword match for meta title and h1 what is best practice?
How exact should my meta titles and H1 one be compare to the keyword you wish to rank on. Eksample. When I do a research with google AdWords the keyword tool shows me: 260 monthly searches for house for rent Hua Hin 140 monthly searches for Hua Hin house for rent 70 monthly searches for House for rent in Hua Hin The first two includes the exact same 5 words while the last one includes the stopword "in". That google have different search volumens for these very smilair search queries tells me that small differences matters. So how does that effect the way i shoulf write my: a)meta titles b)H1 I feel I get better sentences often by reordering the keywords etc. “Top tips on how to rent house in Hua Hin” Instead of “Top tips if you want a house for rent in Hua Hin” Do you use stop words like “in” hua hin. (only used in 25% of the searches queries)? Also would it matter if i write a plural form of a keyword instead of a singular etc propeties and sted of property? My goal is to write easy to read and unique content but i feel i can make exact matches if required with out compromising to much.
On-Page Optimization | | nm19770 -
How important are clean URLs?
Just wanting to understand the importance of clean URLs in regards to SEO effectiveness. Currently, we have URLs for a site that reads as follows: http://www.interhampers.com.au/c/90/Corporate Gift Hampers Should we look into modifying this so that the URL does not have % or figures?
On-Page Optimization | | Gavo1 -
Meta Title Pipes and Spacing
I've been doing optimization on a clients website and want to make sure I'm maximizing my characters. Does anyone have any feedback on the spacing in between the pipes ( | ) ? IE: Internet Marketing Company | Denver SEO | Brand Name Do the spaces before and after the pipes play a role in whether the search engines can distinguish the keyword or is it all considered one word if there is no spaces such as: IE: Internet Marketing Company|Denver SEO|Brand Name Any information will be super helpful. Thanks for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | RezStreamSEO0 -
Dash or vertical bar in titles?
Hello. Should I use a dash or a vertical line in title tags? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
How to optimize a wordpress blog
I’m helping a client optimize a word press blog, and I’m not that familiar with Wordpress. The site is www.athleticfoodie.com. At first I was treating it like a normal website, where the categories would be optimized like pages on a website. However, I now realize that categories don’t have any content on them, so I can’t really optimize anything other than the names. Are the following things the best way to handle on-page optimization for a blog? Optimizing the homepage & domain: Find ways to incorporate the most important keywords into the elements on the main frame of the site: Navigation menu, Widgets, Category names, Alt Images. Optimizing the categories: For the posts within the categories (i.e., photos), work to make sure the category keywords are worked into the post titles (but not too much to seem spammy) Optimizing specific posts. Work keywords into the text and images. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee340