How Additional Characters and Numbers in URL affect SEO
-
Hi fellow SEOmozers,
I noticed that a lot of websites have additional characters and words at the end of the URL in addition keyword optimized URL. Mostly for E-Commerce sites
For example: www.yoursite.com/category/keyword?id=12345&Keyword--Category--cm_jdkfls_dklj or wwww.yoursite.com/category/keyword#83939=-37292
My question is how does the additional characters or parameters(not necessarily tracking parameters) affect SEO? Does it matter if i have additional keywords in the additional stuff in the URL (1st url example)?
If you can provide more information, that would be helpful.
Thank you!
-
I've never experienced a noticable, direct effect in this regard, and have experience with ranking pages well with crazy parameters. As long as things are canonicalized properly and the system isn't creating a bunch of duplicate pages with different parameters, you should be fine.
-
Hi William,
Yup, totally understand that what's best for user is best for search engine. I also agree that having a simple and clean URL www.yoursite.com/category/keyword is definitely better and has more benefits than www.yoursite.com/category/keyword?id=1234%Keyword-_-......
Let's not compared them to the optimized URL but what do you effect does it have on SEO? Does it harm the site in general with this type of URL? Or no effect at all since it also included the keywords in the front and the parameters don't play a role.
-
When in doubt, the answer is almost always the same as the answer to, "What is best for the user?"
Users can't make sense of all those parameters, and bots aren't likely to either. A site like Amazon.com or Canon.com can get away with it, because they have so many other factors going for them. Also, some systems create these parameters automatically, and can't easily be optimized.
So, to answer your question: It's best not to have those parameters. Users like it without them, and it makes it easier for people to link to you, since URLs are more memorable. On the other side of that, it's not the end of the world if you can't do this in an easy manner and your time might be better spent elsewhere.
-
Hi,
Thanks for the article, it help answer some of my questions. However, the examples in the article compared 2 not optimized URLs with 1 keyword included URL. It makes sense that the 3rd URL will perform better as it includes keyword for search engine, users to understand what the page is about and all the other benefits from optimizing the URL.
- Amazon.com - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007TJ5OG/102-8372974-4064145?v=glance&n=502394&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&n=3031001&s=photo&v=glance
- Canon.com - http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=145&modelid=11158
- DPReview.com - http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canonsd400/
However, in my first example: www.yoursite.com/category/keyword?id=12345&Keyword--Category--cm_jdkfls_dklj
The URL included keywords which tell users what the page is about but it also included additional dynamic parameters.
I'm just wondering if these additional dynamic parameters play any role in SEO. Harm or benefit?
-
This is a pretty good explanation, http://moz.com/learn/seo/url
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
-
How Google's "Temporarily remove URLs" in search console works?
Hi, We have created new sub-domain with new content which we want to highlight for users. But our old content from different sub-domain is making top on google results with reputation. How can we highlight new content and suppress old sub-domain in results? Many pages have related title tags and other information in similar. We are planing to hide URLs from Google search console, so slowly new pages will attain the traffic. How does it works?
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ecommerce SEO help
Hi I'm having difficulty managing our product pages for optimisation, we have over 20,000 products. We do keyword research & optimise product titles/meta of new products - however there's a lot to clean up but we have done a lot. I find we rank/convert better on product pages so they would be great to focus on - however when an old product is discontinued, the page is removed & we lose authority by creating new pages for similar products - does anyone have any ideas for managing this? This is something done automatically on the dev side in France. I then have the issue of trying to rank category pages - these are highly competitive areas competing with big brands. I'm finding it tough to know where to focus, the site is vast and I am the only SEO. I've started looking into low hanging fruit - but these aren't necessarily the areas which bring in much revenue. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Remove spam url errors from search console
My site was hacked some time ago. I've since then redesigned it and obviously removed all the injection spam. Now I see in search console that I'm getting hundreds of url errors (from the spam links that no longer work). How do I remove them from the search console. The only option I see is "mark as fixed", but obviously they are not "fixed", rather removed. I've already uploaded a new sitemap and fetched the site, as well as submitted a reconsideration request that has been approved.
Algorithm Updates | | rubennunez0 -
What is your experience with markups (schema.org) in terms of SEO and best practice learnings?
Hi, I am looking to implement schema markups into a variety of websites and currently wondering about best practices. I am working on energy providers, building material, e-retailers, social association among others. While I understand every single one of these is an individual case, I could do with some advices from you, guys. Which markups would you consider key for search engines? I would have naturally chosen markups to highlight the business name, location and products but there is so much more to schema.org! Thanks,
Algorithm Updates | | A_Q0 -
Did Google update the length of characters allowed in Meta Description?
Hey all, I do SEO. I'm currently working with another SEO firm on a project. The lady mentioned to me that Google recently updated (couple months ago) and changed their font causing them to lower the meta description to 55 characters. Is this true? I have not heard of this. Could she be confusing the meta description with the title tag? I didn't know Google could have even update the Title tag too.
Algorithm Updates | | ColeLusby0 -
Does articles for SEO purposes have a minimal and maximum word count in ordered to be crawled/indexed by Google and other search engines?
Does articles for SEO purposes have a minimal and maximum word count in ordered to be crawled/indexed by Google and other search engines?
Algorithm Updates | | WebRiverGroup0 -
SERP and SEO Moz ranking
Until a couple of months ago the predicted SEO Moz ranking for a specific keyword was fairly close to what I actually experienced with my website. However, since then the correlation has not been good. For example, according to SEO Moz I am ranked #1 for a specific keyword with google.ca and google.com yet my site actually shows up consistently at #3 for that keyword. Has anyone else noticed this divergence?
Algorithm Updates | | casper4340 -
How does an exact match domain.me rate for SEO
Anyone have any idea how an exactly matching keyword (using the "domain.me" register) will compare against an almost matching keyword in the Google .ie search engine. (assuming that on and off page SEO will be the same). eg, www.wigets.me against www.mywigets.ie Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | peterds2