URL Length
-
What is the ideal length for an item's URL. Theirs a few different options.
B) www.mydomain.com/category-name/product-name
C) www.mydomain.com/category-name/sub-category-name/product-name
Please choose A, B, or C and explain why you made that decision.
Looking forward to the responses.
-
The minimize url length is always better. Keep it minimized, IE allowed maximum of 2000 characters which is too long. Less then 100 is good and less is even better.
B option is good, going into sub-categories make it lengthy.
-
folder structure is hidden to users and search engines. so i guess link structure is informative on how a website is organized into folders. your suggestion on different options makes sense. Large websites towards option C and smaller ones towards option A
-
glad to share what I've found. I'm blessed in that I get to experiment with methods on several sites that get millions or tens of millions of visits each month
-
Thank you, Alan. I appreciate hearing your thoughts on that.
-
Yes from that perspective, you're correct. Links outweigh folder relationships as signals because links are the "almighty final say".
Of course, if you've got them all in the same folder, then you should also have a sub-nav unique to that folder where each of those pages has the links to each of the other pages.
Then throw in microformat encoded breadcrumbs and that combination is the most potent.
-
If I have separate pages on my site for red widgets, blue widgets and green widgets..... they might not be in the same folder but they might link to one another because I have all widgets pages linking to all other widgets pages.
Would that topical association through links be more powerful than if they were in the same folder but not necessarily linking to one another.
I have always held the belief that link structure is more important than folder structure.
-
Link structure vs. folder structure? Not sure I understand - links point to content. Content is located in folders (or just the root folder). can you clarify?
-
Alan, do you think link structure is more important than folder structure in communicating topical relationships?
-
Let me add the reason for the answers you got.
A) Distinct organization of content is critical to communicating topical relationships and topical separation to search engines
B) URLs of this type provide 1 of the many ways Users can understand clear relationships of content
C) if you go too far down the rabbit hole, it becomes too diluted for search engine value
D) if you go too far down, it crosses the line into confusion for users
-
C. If you have categories and sub-categories, than there is value to organizing your site to reflect that. If you are creating sub-categories for the sake of sub-categories, then I would go with B.
It really depends on the nature of what your site is about. For example, /shoes/running-shoes/specific-shoe-type/ makes sense. However, /shoes/running-shoes/red-running-shoes/red-running-shoes-velcro/red-running-shoes-velcro-hi-top/specific-shoe/ is probably too long.
-
**A) www.mydomain.com/item-name **
If you have a very small website then by all means use this method.
**B) www.mydomain.com/category-name/product-name **
... but once your website grows you will wish that you had done this.
C) www.mydomain.com/category-name/sub-category-name/product-name
... and if you have a reeeeeeally big site then you might need this - but only if your categories run wildly big (ever try to open a DreamWeaver folder with 15,000 items?
I think that where people run into problems is when they try to do this....
www.mydomain/big-green-widgets-with-bells/green-brass-widgets-size-seven/the-ones-with-waffle-treads-and-extra-long-laces-in-yellow
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
-
Urls Too Long - Should I shorten?
On the crawl of our website we have had a warning that 157 have urls that are too long. When I look at the urls they are generally from 2016 or earlier. Should I just leave them as they are or shorten the urls and redirect to new url? Thanks
Technical SEO | | DaleZon4 -
Some URLs in the sitemap not indexed
Our company site has hundreds of thousands of pages. Yet no matter how big or small the total page count, I have found that the "URLs Indexed" in GWMT has never matched "URLS in Sitemap". When we were small and now that we have a LOT more pages, there is always a discrepancy of ~10% or so missing from the index. It's difficult to know which pages are not indexed, but I have found some that I can verify are in the Sitemap.xml file but not at all in the index. When I go to GWMT I can "Fetch and Render" missing pages fine - it's not as though it's blocked or inaccessible. Any ideas on why this is? Is this type of discrepancy typical?
Technical SEO | | Mase0 -
What directory should a site go in (url structure)?
Hi All, The is the first actual SEO campaign i've worked on and I had a few question about where the site should live on the server and url structure. The site is in WP and we're using Yoast SEO. Anyway the site lives in a a folder called Coastal, which is a child of the WWW folder. So the permalink of the homepage is mcoastalwindows.com/coastal/. The URL is mycoastalwindows.com. The thing is I can still get to the homepage or any of the pages on the site by typing in the /coastal/. Another example is permalink mycoastalwndows.com/coastal/siding/ and url mycoastalwindows.com/siding/. The urls always display without the /coastal/, so I'm not too worried about people linking to them, but Yoast puts a canonical element to the permalink and always includes the /coastal/. Also I'm seeing that Google displays a lot of the urls with the /coastal/, which is an issue seeing as we don't link to the pages that way. My original thought was to solve this at the source and just move everything out of the coastal directory, but the developer swears that it's more secure being in another folder especially with WP. What would you all do and what is best practice? Would you move everything out of the coastal folder, 301 re-direct, do something with. htaccess, or another solution? Appreciate the input thanks!
Technical SEO | | Mario.Souza0 -
Best way to deal with these urls?
Found overly dynamic urls in the crawl report. http://www.trespass.co.uk/camping/festivals-friendly/clothing?Product_sort=PriceDesc&utm_campaign=banner&utm_medium=blog&utm_source=Roslyn Best way to deal with these? Cheers Guys
Technical SEO | | Trespass0 -
Which is better Title length vs. keywords?
We run a jobboard. The title tag on a page for a job is often over 70 characters. An example of one would be: " Supplier Quality Inspector (Electrical Manufacturing) Job in Orlando, FL 32809 at Pro Image Solutions | Orlando Jobs!" The company name 'Orlando Jobs!" comes at the end but is also a really good keyword e.g. 'Orlando' and 'Jobs' I am interested in suggestions as to how to make these titles better. For example take off the company name when we go over 70 characters? Move the company name to the front of the title because the company name is also good keywords? I am looking for the best way to handle the issue is all. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | JobBiz0 -
Issues with trailing slash url
Recently, we have changed our website to www.example.com/super-rentals/ (example) and we have done a 301 redirection to the new urls from the old one. We have noticed in Google webmaster tool that urls without trailing slash as 404 error. www.example.com/super-rentals. Please let us know how to fix this issue as soon as possible. Note: Our previous urls are not the urls without trailing slash. It is a different url (www.example.com/super-rentals.htm) we have rewritten in to www.example.com/super-rentals/ only. I would like to know why GWT pulls out the urls without trailing slash and shows in 404 error. Thanks for your time
Technical SEO | | massimobrogi0 -
Canonical URL
In our campaign, I see this notices Tag value
Technical SEO | | shebinhassan
florahospitality.com/ar/careers.aspx Description
Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical. What does it mean? Because If I try to view the source code of our site, it clearly gives me the canonical url.0 -
Products with discrete URLs for each color
here is the issue. i have an ecommerce site that on a category page, shows each individual color for each product sold. and there is a distinct URL for each color. each product page shares the same content, with the only potentially differentiating factor being customer reviews (not nearly enough of these to differentiate anything). so we have URLs like: www.domain.com/product-green www.domain.com/product-yellow www.domain.com/product-red and so on. i am looking for a way to consolidate these URL while still showing all colors on the category page. the first solution i am considering is using the hash tag. so we would create www.domain.com/product#green, www.domain.com/product#yellow, www.domain.com/product#red. if possible, i would set the canonical tag as www.domain.com/product. the second solution would be to use the canonical tag and keep the URLs as is. the issue i see here is that we would need to create www.domain.com/product and show that page somewhere. www.domain.com/product would the URL that the above color URLs would canonicalize to. what would be the preferred solution? or is there something else?
Technical SEO | | rakesh_patel0