Will I loose from SEO if I rename my urls to be more keyword friendly?
-
As a good practice of SEO is to have your keywords in the links. I am thinking of doing some optimization and change my urls to more effective keywords. I am using shopify and there is an option (a tick) that you can check while changing the url (ex. for a category, for a product, for a blog post). This will give a redirection to the old post to the new.
Is it good practice? Is it risky for losing SEO or it will help to rank higher because I will have better keywords in my links?
-
I will check those guides and see how I can work on optimizations. Thank you.
-
Hi Spiros
Below are two guides that may assist in your URL structure. It appears the site is not ranking for target keywords so a re-structure is maybe beneficial. It is an ideal practice to have the target customer query in the URL structure. Shopify though has limitations so may need to work within them.
https://www.hostgator.com/blog/best-url-structure-seo/
https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
The next step will 301'ing the old page to the new page.
Hope that helps.
-
If my pages were ranking top 20 keywords I would use tools like MOZ! So no they are not ranking top 20 and I want to achieve this....
-
Spiros
The first rule of seo - is to do no harm. Sometimes when you optimise a site as per "best practice" - then you lose rankings. It is important to protect the keywords that matter that you already rank for.
So an initial step is an audit.
Perhaps I will reframe. - is the page you want to change the URL for ranking in the top 20 positions for the keyword you are targeting for?
Regards
-
Obviously, I want to change the URL in order to optimize for a better keyword and not fix broken links. So you are saying that it will hurt SEO? I am using moz tools because SEO in not 100% optimized for my site. So I don't think my pages are ranking well. And ranking well is related to the specific keyword you want to rank for a page. An "expert" from MOZ told me that it can take like 5-10 months to see results from SEO actions. Then this is not measurable...I can't fix something today "ex a URL" and wait 10 months! I will need a more specific answer!
-
HI
If it is not broken - you do not fix it. So the first question is, how is the site ranking today for the customer query/ies you are targetting? If you are ranking well, then likely do not touch urls.
Regards
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
-
SEO of blogging websites
What are the best practices of doing SEO of article/blogging websites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Domain.com/old-url to domain.com/new-url
HI, I have to change old url`s to new one, for the same domain and all landing pages will be the same: domain.com/old-url I have to change to: domain.com/new-url All together more than 70.000 url. What is best way to do that? should I use 301st redirect? is it possible to do in code or how? what could you please suggest? Thank you, Edgars
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Edzjus3330 -
SEO within the URL /
If I were optimizing for 'marketing success' and my URL structure was domain.com/marketing/success would that count? I'm not sure if the '/' affects the keyword term. My assumption is that it does, but I wasn't 100% sure. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristinaWitmer0 -
Rankings and keywords
I have a site www.firewall-cs.com that I have been working on for 4 months. The first 2 months the keywords were going up and then...dropped like a rock! We didn't build the website, but it is a Wordpress site so I can make some changes. For the keywords that have "IT" in them, we haven't been able to recover. It's like Google isn't even reading the home page. The home page slider has the H1 in it and has 3. I have told this to the client. Plus there isn't a lot of content on the page. Is the H1 issue enough for the word "IT Support Orlando" to not rank? Any suggestions would help! Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClickIt0 -
Received "Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site:" but most of the example URLs are noindexed.
An example URL can be found here: http://symptom.healthline.com/symptomsearch?addterm=Neck%20pain&addterm=Face&addterm=Fatigue&addterm=Shortness%20Of%20Breath A couple of questions: Why is Google reporting an issue with these URLs if they are marked as noindex? What is the best way to fix the issue? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
What will the effect of normalising the case of my URLs be?
Hi all, I have a web site with a selection of pages with excellent rankings, mostly in the top 3 for the keywords we want to rank for. Currently, the URLs are mostly presented mixed case, like this: www.mydomain.com/Type/ITEM-IDENTIFIER/ However we have problems of different cases being used in different parts of our application, and also it's obviously not that attractive the way it is. What we are proposing to do is deploy a change to our web site that lowercases all URLs in internal links, as well as present the URLs in lowercase in our sitemap.xml, and provide any links to partners from this point on in lowercase format. We are also proposing to 301 redirect any non-lowercase URLs to the lowercase version. These pages already have a canonical link tag due to us hosting different versions of these pages on multiple domains, for skinning purposes. The link in the canonical link tag will also be changed to be lowercase. What I am concerned about is, URLs of the case above have been in the rankings for a few years now, and if all of a sudden our links are all lowercase, will they drop off the rankings? Or will the above measures mean that the pagerank is transferred to the lowercase version of the URL? Thanks in advance, James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeeTickets0 -
URL for New Product
Hi, We run an established website (mindflash.com) selling online training software. We are getting ready to launch a new section of the site where our users can sell their own online training programs. This will be branded as the 'marketplace'. This section will have a main page, category pages, tag pages, search and individual course pages. In our URL structure, I'd love to target the word 'training courses' but I don't want to neglect the product brand either. Is it better to use /training-courses in the marketplace urls or to use /marketplace? Or is it better to use both like /marketplace-training-courses or /marketplace/training-courses? Option 1: Example main section page: mindflash.com/training-courses Example category page: mindflash.com/training-courses/software-training Option 2: Example main section page: mindflash.com/marketplace Example category page: mindflash.com/marketplace/software-training Option 3: Example main section page: mindflash.com/marketplace-training-courses Example category page: mindflash.com/marketplace-training-courses/software-training Option 4: Example main section page: mindflash.com/marketplace/training-courses Example category page: mindflash.com/marketplace/training-courses/software-training Which option is better and why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mindflash0 -
In order to improve SEO with silos'urls, should i move my posts from blog directory to pages'directories ?
Now, my website is like this: myurl.com/blog/category1/mypost.html myurl.com/category1/mypage.html So I use silos urls. I'd like to improve my ranking a little bit more. Is it better to change my urls like this: myurl.com/category1/blog/mypost.html or maybe myurl.com/category1/mypost.html myurl.com/category1/mypage.html Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Max840