Does having shorter URLs help with rankings?
-
Hello here.I own an e-commerce website (virtualsheetmusic.com), and some of our most important category pages have pretty long URLs. Here is an example:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Violin.html
I am evaluating the possibility to shorten URLs like the above to something like:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/violin/
But since it is going to pretty hard and time consuming (considering the custom system we have in place on that site), I am trying to find out if it really matters and worth doing it from a SEO stand point. I am aware that from a user prospective shorter URLs are preferable, and we plan to pursue a better URL architecture on our website in the near future just for that, but this question, at the moment, should be strictly related to SEO.
Any thoughts on this topic are very welcome!
-
That's a great idea Dana, thank you for the suggestion. I will try that with some of our less performing category pages, then I'll post the results here.
Thank you again!
Best,
Fabrizio
-
Hi again Fabrizio,
Have you thought about experimenting with a couple? Perhaps choose two categories that may have slipped from page 1 to page 2, or even the top of page one to the bottom of page 1. re-write the URLs and then track the results. If you get the desired result, then move on gradually to update the others. This way you mitigate risk, but still find out whether or not it's something you might benefit from.
Just a thought.
Dana
-
Wow, thank you so much guys for your replies and insights, and thank you Dana for your kind reply! I am so glad to know about your daughter
The fact is that actually we have pretty good rankings for our major category pages such as the violin page above (currently ranking 6th for "violin sheet music") but we have noticed tat we have been dropping down, gradually and steadily. We used to be at the first spot with "violin sheet music" with that page from 2003 to 2011.
So... I personally don't like to risk losing traffic from those very important category pages, that despite are not indexed at the top spots, are still giving us a lot of traffic since we are anyway on the 1st page. What do you think?
Thank you again!
Best,
Fabrizio
-
Hi Fabrizio,
Mike's answer is a good one and I would also definitely recommend Dr. Pete's post.
What I would like you to be aware of is the risk in what you are wanting to do. If you are already ranking well, for the love of all that is holy in this world, leave your URLs alone. Here is what Dr. Pete had to say about the "risk factor:"
"All Change Is Risky
I know it’s not what the motivational speakers want you to hear, but in the real world, change carries risk. Even a perfectly executed site-wide URL change – with pristine 301-redirects – is going to take time for Google to process. During that time, your rankings may bounce. You may get some errors. If your new URL scheme isn’t universally better than the old one, some pages may permanently lose ranking. There’s no good way to A/B test a site-wide SEO change.
More often, it’s just a case of diminishing returns. Going from pretty good to pretty gooder probably isn’t worth the time and effort, let alone the risk." - Dr. Pete Meyers
You need to manage expectations on this one if you decide to go forward and make stakeholders aware that they could be looking at a significant downside (decrease in traffic and links) immediately after implementation. That doesn't mean that there couldn't be a significant upside eventually, but there are no guarantees.
I love your site by the way. My daughter and I have been subscribers on and off for years. Cheers!
Dana
-
Hi Fabrizo,
Shorter URLs are preferred. In your example I personally feel it makes sense to remove download and indici from your URL struture, because that information does not mean anything to me, the user (maybe it does to someone who plays violins... so that statement might not be true, but to me that information is irrelevant).
Now are you going to go from page 2 to page 1 with a change like this... maybe? There aren't any hard facts that will say how big of an impact that will make; however, the closer a keyword is to your domain in terms of your URL, the more weight is assessed to it in terms of keyword association - if that makes sense. So...
domain.com/downloads/Indici/Violin.html appears less relevant than domain.com/violin/ if a user is searching for "violin".
Also, Dr. Pete wrote an article a few years ago on changing URLs for SEO purposes. I think that all of the information still stands true for today.
Hope this helps,
Mike
-
Fabrizo,
Google loves when all your keywords, Page titles, Meta Descriptions all are in the same order, length, spelling and so forth, even though meta keywords show little or no effect as of late. Same goes for the URL's.
A perfect page would have the exact same URL, as Page title, Keyword, and meta description. So if your starting from scratch that may be a target to aim for. As far as URL length there may be a limit but its going to be a high number like 2083 characters.
I guess probably the best yay to choose the URL is to take a look at the Page Title name guidelines which is 20 to 70 characters. Now you can match the URL to page title with 70 characters.
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 url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!
Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
Product URL Optimisation
Hi guys, We are currently trying to add new products to our site but we are in a quandary on what type of URL structure to pursue. For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | michel_8
Product Name: Aspect Exfoliating Cleanser 240ml https://www.example.com.au/aspect-exfoliating-cleanser-240ml (including the size)
VS
https://www.example.com.au/aspect-exfoliating-cleanser 1.) Which is a better URL structure based on SEO 2018 and why?
2.) Is there any merit in removing the size from the URL key with the aim of attracting more traffic? Keen to hear from you guys! Cheers,0 -
What is the Redirect Rule for corresponding https urls to new domain with the same https urls?
2 sites have the same urls but the owner wants just the 1 site. So I will be doing a 301 redirect with .htaccess from https://www.example.co.uk/sportsbook/SOCCER/today/ redirecting to https://www.example.com//sportsbook/SOCCER/today/ There are a lot of urls that are the same, so I was wondering what the rule is to put in the file please that will change them all to the corresponding urls? Would this be correct?... RewriteEngine on
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WSIDW
RewriteCond %{HTTPS_HOST} ^example.co.uk [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS_HOST} ^www.example.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://example.com$1 [L,R=301,NC] Or would a simple rule like this work... redirect 301 / http://www.new domain.com/ If not correct could you please give me the correct rule, thanks! Then of course doing a change of address of address in webmaster tools after. Also... do I still need to do the forwarding from the https://www.example.co.uk/ domain provider after as well? Many thanks for your help in advance.0 -
Changing URLS: from a short well optimised URL to a longer one – What's the traffic risk
I'm working with a client who has a website that is relatively well optimised, thought it has a pretty flat structure and a lot of top level pages. They've invested in their content over the years and managed to rank well for key search terms. They're currently in the process of changing CMS and as a result of new folder structuring in the CMS the URLs for some pages look to have significantly changed. E.g Existing URL is: website.com/grampians-luxury-accommodation which ranked quite well for luxury accommodation grampians New URL when site is launched on new CMS would be website.com/destinations/victoria/grampians My feeling is that the client is going to lose out on a bit of traffic as a result of this. I'm looking for information or ways or case studies to demonstrate the degree of risk, and to help make a recommendation to mitigate risk.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moge0 -
Keyword Rankings: One keyword dropped, dragging other rankings down. Possible or not?
Hey moz fans, So these week I noticed significant drop in rankings... But what caught my attention is that one specific keyword dropped 18 positions, and all the other just 1-3. Print screen: http://prntscr.com/7fb4g4 Do you think it's possible that the drop of that page, that went 18 positions down, brought the whole domain down? Or is it another cause?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kokolo0 -
Canonical Tag help
Hello everyone, We have implemented canonical tag on our website: http://www.indialetsplay.com/ For e.g. on http://www.indialetsplay.com/cycling-rollers?limit=42 we added canonical as http://www.indialetsplay.com/cycling-rollers?limit=all (as it showcase all products) Our default page is http://www.indialetsplay.com/cycling-rollers Is canonical tag implementation right? Or we need to add any other URL. Please suggest
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Moz Rank and how to do better?
Could anyone offer me some help regarding Moz Rank? Of all the metrics this seems to be one where we want to improve but just have not been able to. Does anyone have any advice or tips that we could look at implementing to get this thing to move at all?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
We are changing ?page= dynamic url's to /page/ static urls. Will this hurt the progress we have made with the pages using dynamic addresses?
Question about changing url from dynamic to static to improve SEO but concern about hurting progress made so far.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | h3counsel0