Long Domain Name - Subpage URL Question
-
I have a long domain name, so domainname/services/page title can get pretty lengthy.
I have a services page, as a summary page since there's a few of htem, with more detailed on the actual page.
In this situation, would it be better to do
domainname.com/services/service-name which can exceed the suggested 70 characters, or would it be a better idea to do domain.com/service-name and just have hte m under the services menu?
Is there any advantage/disadvantage to going out 2-3 tiers? or having the sub pages of those services off the domain instead of a child of the root child page
Please let me know if any clarification is needed.
Thanks!
-
I mean i have a long domain in the deregulated energy market, but it's an older domain and i have it performing well. But as anything, everything can be better. So if I'm treading down a dark path here, let me know. I always operate under the premise everything can be better and nothing is non negotiable. Clearly I'm posting here for a reason
-
Sorry posted on an account i use for a client.
Anyway, the domain in question is houstonhouseinspection.com -> Given that it's good for the niche market of home inspections. So shortening it i don't think would be a good idea.
But the url structure i think could be reshaped and the www. could be trimmed out and i could easily keep things in the 65-75 range.
Would this be an effective measure? .. My only issue is all the www. referrals i have from multiple directory listings that have been registered. Multiple local ones and chambers and what not. So ultimately with what my goals here a reshaping of the actual sub directory names would be more efficient.
-
how many characters is your domain name. the longer the worse, is this an established site, if not consider getting a shorter domain that's easier for people to type in.
without knowing your product and categories complexity it's hard to give advice on what your structure should be. but exceeding 70 characters is no big deal.
-
I hear you, I think I'm not in too deep yet, so probably shortening is a good idea to sooner rather than later. Thanks for your input today, been insightful to say the least
-
I have done it both ways. The shorter the better, but sometimes you have to make it longer to get the information in. I like to use at least 1 sub directory to help with organization and this also helps with analytics in organizing how things are reported. You have to also look at the URL and think - Can I parse this with an analytic tool and get the information I need?
This is where the art comes in with the science.
Good luck!
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
-
URL too long. Shorten and redirect, or leave alone?
MOZ is indicating that i have several URLs that are too long. Should I shorten the URLs and redirect the long URLs to the new, shorter, URL? Or should i leave them alone, as I've been reading to avoid redirects.
Technical SEO | | Hanover4401 -
Old domain to new domain
Hi, A website on server A is no longer required. The owner has redirected some URLS of this website (via plugin) to his new website on server B -but not all URLS. So when I use COMMAND site:website A , I see a mixture of redirected URLS and not redirected URLS.Therefore two websites are still being indexed in some form and causing duplication. However, weirdly when I crawl with Screaming Frog I only see one URL which is 301 redirected to the new website. I would have thought I'd see lots of URLs which hadn't been redirected. How come it is different to using the site:command? Anyway, how do I move to the new website completely without the old one being indexed anymore. I thought I knew this but have read so many blogs I've confused myself! Should I: Redirect all URLS via the HTACESS file on old website on server A? There are lots of pages indexed so a lot of URLs. What if I miss some? or Point the old domain via DNS to server B and do the redirects in website B HTaccess file? This seems more sensible but does this method still retain the website rankings? Thanks for any help
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Category URL Pagination where URLs don't change between pages
Hello, I am working on an e-commerce site where there are categories with multiple pages. In order to avoid pagination issues I was thinking of using rel=next and rel=prev and cannonical tags. I noticed a site where the URL doesn't change between pages, so whether you're on page 1,2, or 3 of the same category, the URL doesn't change. Would this be a cleaner way of dealing with pagination?
Technical SEO | | whiteonlySEO0 -
I have a blog on a sub domain, would you move it to the rood domain in a directory?
I have a blog that preforms fairly well on a sub domain, but after reading a post that Rand made to the Q & A I am thinking about moving it to the main domain in a sub directory. What are your thoughts on this? Here are some stats on it. The blog currently gets about 5 x the traffic of the main domain. The domain is older, 2008 creation date. They pretty much register for the same keywords.
Technical SEO | | LesleyPaone0 -
Home link tags slash or full domain name
Recently I was asked the question by a client who has some SEO knowledge..... We built their site and during testing we simply set the home page links to be: home rather than: home This was mainly to help while in test and dev as they were on different servers to the live site and if we had put the full domain in it kept taking us from dev/test to live. Is it bad to have just a slash for SEO purposes or is it REALLY that important on home links to have the full domain as a slash takes you back to the full domain? Thanks
Technical SEO | | spiralsites0 -
Content on top-level-domain vs. content on subpage
Hello Seomoz community, I just built a new website, mainly for a single affiliate programm and it ranks really well at google. Unfortunately the merchant doesn’t like the name of my domain, that’s why I was thrown out of the affiliate program. So suppose the merchant is a computer monitor manufacturer and his name is “Digit”. The name of my domain is something like monitorsdigital.com at the moment. (It’s just an example, I don’t own this URL). The structure of my website is: 1 homepage with much content on it + a blog. The last 5 blog entries are displayed on the homepage. Because I got kicked out of the affiliate program I want to permanent redirect monitorsdigital.com to another domain. But what should the new website look like? I have two possibilities: Copy the whole monitorsdigital website to a new domain, called something like supermonitors.com. Integrate the monitorsdigital website into my existing website about different monitor manufacturers. E.g.: allmonitors.com/digit-monitors.html (that url is permitted by the merchant) What do you think is the better way? I just got the impression, that it seems to be a little easier to rank high with a top-level-domain (www.supermonitors.com) than with a subpage (www.allmonitors.com/digit-monitors.html). However the subpage can benefit from the domain authority, that was generated by other subpages. Thanks for your help and best regards MGMT
Technical SEO | | MGMT0 -
Canonical URL
I previously set the canonical Url in google web masters to the non www version, when I check my on page opt, it tells me that I have a critical issue with this. Should I change it in google web masters back to the www version? if so is there the possibility of negative results? Or is there a better way to deal with this? Note, I have inbound links pointing to both types.
Technical SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Penalty for many domains pointing to the same URL?
I've searched around on the Google forums, and other sources (including the Q&A!), but haven't seen a solid answer on this one. I've recently discovered that throughout the years we've had several hundred domains pointed to our homepage. These are our domains and are related to our niche. I believe they were pointed for the purposes of attracting type-in traffic. Before last month I knew at least some existed, but I didn't realize the extent until last week. I know there isn't any positive SEO effect to doing this (except perhaps if any of the domains have links to them, and a few do), but is there any negative SEO effect? I realize that there are legitimate redirects for type-in traffic, like misspellings and such, but most of these are just exact-match-domains. It just screams unnatural to me, but perhaps I'm just a little paranoid. 🙂
Technical SEO | | tncomseo0