Question on URL wording and structure best practices
-
We're mapping out some URL structures and trying to figure out what would be best for separating folders for articles and videos regarding wording in the folder say:
www.site.com/category/article/name-of-article/id#/ ---- www.site.com/category/video/name-of-video/id#/
vs.
www.site.com/category/a/name-of-article/id#/ ---- www.site.com/category/v/name-of-video/id#/
Second option came about the ''shorter is better' way of thinking. Downside I see to it is if the link would be copied and pasted somewhere probably would be best for a user to make it clear they are clicking into an article or a video, don't think just an 'a' or a 'v' would be very telling in that scenario.
Would it be better for search engines to make it clearer with the whole word in there? Any other pros and cons to each? Not sure what's the best route here.
-
I agree
-
Definitely the shorter the better but don't abbreviate words, If you can just go www.site.com/videos/[video name] that would definitely give an improved signal over and above longer URLs of competition.
Or you could possibly get away with www.site.com/blog/videos/[video name] this would carry a little bit less weight but be more descriptive.
Definitely rule of thumb the shorter the URL the better, do not abbreviate, (Google may not know what it means).
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
-
My brand name has 2 words but Google only indexing as 1 word. Is there a fix?
Hi all...I'm at a loss. I've never had this happen. Google only shows pages of my site when I search the brand name as one word. When I Google the site as one word BrandBrand- it only shows my blog page and about us page plus Twitter and Facebook on page 1. The homepage does not show up at all. When I Google the site as two words Brand Brand - My Facebook page is on page 1 but nothing else. The homepage isn't showing up at all. When I search both words on Bing and Yahoo both are indexing it as two words and shows on page 1. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | TexasBlogger0 -
Will this URL structure: "domain.com/s/content-title" cause problems?
Hey all, We have a new in-house built too for building content. The problem is it inserts a letter directly after the domain automatically. The content we build with these pages aren't all related, so we could end up with a bunch of urls like this: domain.com/s/some-calculator
Technical SEO | | joshuaboyd
domain.com/s/some-infographic
domain.com/s/some-long-form-blog-post
domain.com/s/some-product-page Could this cause any significant issues down the line?0 -
URL Understanding -
Hello everyone! Can anyone help me understanding this url? Product.asp?PID=1236 cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Cloaking? Best Practices Crawling Content Behind Login Box
Hi- I'm helping out a client, who publishes sale information (fashion sales etc.) In order for the client to view the sale details (date, percentage off etc.) they need to register for the site. If I allow google bot to crawl the content, (identify the user agent) but serve up a registration light box to anyone who isn't google would this be considered cloaking? Does anyone know what the best practice for this is? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Nopadon
Technical SEO | | nopadon0 -
Best URL Structure for Product Pages?
I am happy with my URLs and my ecommerce site ranks well over all, but I have a question about product URL's. Specifically when the products have multiple attributes such as "color". I use a header URL in order to present the 'style' of products, www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-GIB-LPCCT-LIST and I allow each 'color' to have it's own URL so people can send or bookmark a specific item. www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-GIB-LPCCT-ANCH1 www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-GIB-LPCCT-WRCH1 I use a rel canonical to show that the header URL is the URL search engines should be indexing and to avoid duplicate content issues from having the exact same info, MP3's, PDF's, Video's accessories, etc on each specific item URL. I also have a 'noindex no follow' on the specific item URL. These header URLs rank well, but when using tools like SEOMoz, which I love, my header pages fail for using rel canonical and 'noindex no follow' I've considered only having the header URL, but I like the idea of shoppers being able to get to the specific product URL. Do I need the no index no follow? Do I even need the rel canonical? Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | dianeb1520 -
Old URL redirect to New URL
Alright I did something dumb a year a go and I'm still paying for it. I changed my hyphenated URL to the non-hyphenated version when I redesigned my website. I say it was dumb because I lost most of my link juice even though I did 301 redirects (via the htaccess file) for almost all of the pages I could find in Google's index. Here's my problem. My new site took a huge hit in traffic (down 60%) when I made the change and even though I've done thousands of redirects my old site is still showing up in the SERPS and send much if not most of my traffic. I don't want to take the old site down in fear it will kill all of my traffic. What should I do? Is there a better method I should explore then 301 redirects? Could the other site be affecting my current rank since it's still there? (FYI...both sites are built on the WP platform). Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated. Thank you! Joe
Technical SEO | | kaje0 -
Website Page Structuring and URL re writing - need helpful resources
Hello, I am not technically very sound and I need some good articles that teach me how to think about and go about website pages structuring and url rewriting that is seo friendly. I will be most obliged if some of you great seomoz-ers can pitch in with help. Regards, Talha ZigZag Solutions
Technical SEO | | TopGearMedia0 -
Help with steps to take when fixing cannonical url structure?
I would like to 301 redirect all the variations of my site to a single url but would like some clarification on some issues. I have always been confused about how to handle cannonicalization and hopefully this can clear it up for me and others. This particular site is about 1 year old and gets approximately 15k uniques a month in a great niche. I want to make sure I do this correctly as to not hurt my existing rankings which are quite good. Here is is what I am unsure about. Basically I should pick the best url structure to redirect all the others to correct? What determines what url is best to redirect all the rest to? is it www.domain.com, http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com? Is the best one to redirect to always standard and something I should set up at the beginning of my site? Or is picking the best url to redirect to based on what url starts to rank in google and you then use that one? Should I be going through each of my rankings and seeing what url is ranking in google for each page? On this particular site ALL of my urls in google have no www. or http but instead show up in the SE as domain.com or domain.com/inner-page/html. In that case what do I do? I know the slow way to do redirects. I use my hostgator account and do it in cpanel and do it one by one. Is there a faster way where I can go and make lots of changes at once? Maybe I can choose all the variations and put in the one I want them all to redirect to? After I figure the above out is fixing all of this as simple as redirecting ALL variations to the one I will use moving forward for each page on my site? Then I am done? Thanks again for the help! Jake
Technical SEO | | PEnterprises0