Long or Short URLs. Who's Coming to Dinner?
-
This has been discussed on the forums in some regard.
My situation.
Example 1 Long Keyword URL:
www.abctown.com/keyword-for-life-helping-keywords-everywhere-rank-better
Example 2 Short Keyword URL:
In both examples I want to improve rankings for the "keyword" phrase. My current URL is example 1. And I've landed a page one ranking in Google (7) with that URL. In attempts to improve rankings further (top 5), I was toying with the idea of going simpler with all my URLs in favor of the example 2 model.
Might this method help or hurt my current rankings? In recent articles I've read it seems that going with the simpler more human approach to my SEO efforts.
Any thought would be appreciated.
Cheers,
-
Agreed. The risk of losing juice from a redirect would keep me from moving forward. The only way that I would consider redirecting the old page is if the new page provides better and more relevant/current content.
If you don't plan on improving the content and are only using duplicate content then there is no need to change the page or URL.
-
If this was on my site I would not change the URL.
You might gain a little from having a better URL but you might lose a little by doing a redirect. Maybe you would lose more from the redirect than you gain from the short URL.
So, I would start using better URLs going forward and spend the time savings on new content.
-
Yes, as I mentioned above, in order to keep page authority (at least most of it) and ranking, you will want to 301 the page.
-
Thanks for the input! Great advise.
In the above examples, if I decided to move to a shorter, simpler URL for page abctown.com/keyword-for-life-helping-keywords-everywhere-rank-better to abctown.com/keyword
Would you setup the 301 from the current page URL to the simpler one or the new simple URL to the current URL???
Appreciate the help!
-
I try to make the URL match the most important keyword that I hope to rank for.
-
Test, test, test.
It seems that the general rule of thumb on old URLs redirecting to new ones is that you will lose some of the linking value in the redirect.
But I must agree with Richard Getz, in that you may want a middle ground. You certainly shouldn't over kill KWs in the URL and I would advise never using the Keyword twice the way you have in Example 1.
-
This answer comes right from Rand himself (and a few other answers), as I just stumbled upon it in Quora yesterday:
http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-permalink-structure-for-SEO
And to add my two cents, as far as rankings, I don't think you can credit the URL alone for a #1 page ranking. I would construct your URL as Rand suggests and focus your on-page optimization efforts in a holistic manner.
-
I'd love to see if someone has tests to this effect. I have silly long urls (mostly because I designed them before I knew anything about SEO.) But, I kind of feel that they help me.
My philosophy is that if I am targeting long tail traffic then having a url like, mydomain.com/questions-about-blue-widgets-and-where-to-purchase-them is good. But, if I have an article that I want at the top of the serps for a particular competetive term then I would go for something like mydomain.com/blue-widgets.
I've heard people say that BING likes shorter urls...not sure if it is true though.
-
I would vote for middle ground here on future pages, and questions on current page metrics.
www.abctown.com/keyword-for-life
And then lengthen the Title to the full title of the page.
Does the current page have many inbound links? If so, doing a 301 will loos some of that juice. Can you get the inbound links re-pointed? If so, then 301 the page and get the old links to point to the new page.
If not, and this page has a high authority, then you will take a hit on the move, at least for the short term. But building more inbound links to the new page will resolve this.
Also, if you do move the page, I would push it back out on your social network to get the SEs attention and build fresh links back to the new page. Dr. Pete recently wrote about how the canonical tag is respected by Facebook and Twitter, so they might then respect the 301 also.
In short, I would make the change as the shorter URL would be better 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
-
When Content creation isn't an option...
I currently work as an SEO/SEO in training. Oftentimes I get projects that require me to look at well established websites of big brands, the kind one would assume put a lot of effort into their sites, and make SEO changes. Additionally they want "actionable" changes that can be made on the fly so content creation, and most linkbuilding, is usually out of the question. Does this limit me to just changing meta titles and descriptions? What if all that seems alright too?
On-Page Optimization | | Resolute0 -
Redirects for new site new urls?
If redoing a site and updating some of the url's for SEO should you do permanent redirects for the old sites url's ? Using WordPress. I saw that the Yoast Pro plugin allows you to do this inside WordPress , is this the best way? Suggestions.? I know there are old articles written out on the web pointing back to the what will be soon old url's so just wondering what's the best way to go about this. Thanks Scott
On-Page Optimization | | scott3150 -
Paginated URLs are getting Indexed
Hi, For ex: - My site is www.abc.com and Its paginated URLs for www.abc.com/jobs-in-delhi are in the format of : www.abc.com/jobs-in-delhi-1, www.abc.com/jobs-in-delhi-2 and vice versa also i have used pagination tags rel=next and rel=prev. My concern is all the paginated URLs are getting indexed so is their any disadvantage if these URLs are getting indexed as somewhere i have read that link juice may get distributed in case of pagination. isn't it good to use Noindex, Follow so that we can make the Google to understand that paginated page are not so much important and that should not be ranked.
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
URLs and folder structure for an E-commerce
Hi there !-) I´m helping a friend who has a e-commerce about nail polish in Brazil. I´m a little in doubt about the urls and folder structure. Two questions: 1. There are 10 products per category and 50 categories. Should I put them all in the root folder or creat 2 major categories ( 25 sub-categories each one)? 2. Whats the better product page url ( the store has around 500) nailpolish.com/IMPORT/BRAND/NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT OR nailpolish.com/COMPLETE-NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT Whats the best recomandation?
On-Page Optimization | | SeoMartin10 -
SEOmoz's On-page Checker upto date?
Helllo Mozzers, Just wondering if SEOmoz's on-page optimisation checker is upto date with google recent updates? If not... what do you suggest?
On-Page Optimization | | Prestige-SEO0 -
Question about URLs
Hello! I have a client that wants to upload an URL like this: www.example.com/keyword/page-name.html The main problem is that www.example.com/keyword/ doesn't exist and gives a 404 error so I'd prefer not doing that...... What do you think about this? And if the client wants to go ahead, is there any solution? A 301 to the final page would help? Thank you in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | Juandbbam0 -
On-Page SEO Priorities: Title's, Anchor Text or Meta data?
**Any suggestions for prioritized on-page SEO work? Relative weights of importance? ** **What is most important from highest to lowest? ** MetaTag Descriptions? Titles? Anchor Text? Alt Text - for images? Anything else? We might not be able to do everything at once like I desire ......but I do feel we should at least get the ball moving in the right direction. I am looking for ideas or suggestions on what to prioritize for a little bit of on-page SEO work on our website. I personally feel that SEO is pretty important but I am a novice. I have been reading this site the past week and want to convince my webpage guy that on-page SEO is important and that we should at least do a few things and gradually get the work done. Rightfully so our #1 priority is to redesign our landing pages (they are bad) . I also think we should do a little On-Page work concurently. (Lack of on-page SEO is also preventiing me from successfully submitting and being accepted by Dmoz, Yahoo, BOW etc) He is mainly a back engine guy and does a very good job with that. If I were to TELL him to do a few prioritized on-page SEO things what would you suggest? He did do something on the home page at my suggestion but that is all to this point. We have over 400 pages indexed with very little on-page SEO on them. Thank you, UtahTiger
On-Page Optimization | | Boodreaux0 -
Using magentos own url re-writes
We are changing ecommerce platforms. Is it best to use magentos own url re-writes to redirect every page of a site from its old url to it new one?
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0