Strategies in Renaming URLs
-
We're renaming all of our Product URLs (because we're changing eCommerce Platforms), and I'm trying to determine the best strategy to take.
Currently, they are all based on product SKUs. For example, Bacon Dental Floss is:
http://www.stupid.com/fun/BFLS.html
Right now, I'm thinking of just using the Product name. For example, Bacon Dental Floss would become:
http://www.stupid.com/fun/bacon-dental-floss.html
Is this strategy the best for SEO? Any better ideas?
Thanks!
-
Classic. Well maybe he shouldn't change anything if he is currently ranked #3, but I assume that is due to the strength of his domain, stupid.com.
All of this talk about bacon reminded me of a couple of fellows here in Seattle who come out with a new bacon product every year, and to promote they also come out with some type of bacon art.
May I present to you, Bacon Kevin Bacon:
-
Well dignan, you will probably be as surprised as I am right now. Go ahead and Google Bacon Dental floss.
In our ignorance, we assumed it was not a competitive market. Justin's site is ranked 3rd for the term behind amazon.com and another listing. I checked the first 50 results and it is filled with various sites all specifically titled "Bacon Dental Floss".
I have to go. A friend of mine has a hot tip on a new product, Flounder Apple juice and I need to catch the IPO.
-
I agree with Ryan.
The best practice would be to include the full name and/or description of the product. It is doubtful that the Bacon Dental Floss competition is extremely fierce, so the first link with proper title tags and content will most likely end up as a top result, but why not do things correctly for maximum impact over time.
I do not expect any free bacon dental floss for my participation in this thread.
-
Bacon Dental Floss? That's actually a product? Wow.
I guess if Clamato juice is out there then why not Bacon Dental Floss.
I apologize but I needed to get that out of my system. As for your question, you desire readable URLs with keywords in them. So your second example is preferred.
The next step of improvement would be to use friendly URLs which strip the html extension. It would shorten your URLs by 5 characters and make them even more readable: www.stupid.com/fun/bacon-dental-floss
-
You want keywords in the url. Use whatever the keywords are best for bacon dental floss.
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
-
Location in URLs question
Hi there, my company is a national theater news publisher. Quick question about a particular use case. When an editor publishes a story they can assign several discrete locations, allowing it to appear on each of those locations within our website. This article (http://www.theatermania.com/denver-theater/news/full-casting-if-then-tour-idina-menzel_74354.html), for example, appears in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Denver section. We force the author to choose a primary location from that list, which controls the location displayed in the URL. Is this a bad practice? I'm wondering if the fact that having 'Denver' in the URL is misleading and hurts SEO value, particularly since that article features several other cities.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
What's the best URL structure?
I'm setting up pages for my client's website and I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this. Which of the following would be best (let's say the keywords being used are "sell xgadget" "sell xgadget v1" "sell xgadget v2" "sell xgadget v3" etc.). Domain name: sellgadget.com Potential URL structures: 1. sellxgadget.com/v1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zing-Marketing
2. sellxgadget.com/xgadget-v1
3. sellxgadget.com/sell-xgadget-v1 Which would be the best URL structure? Which has the least risk of being too keyword spammy for an EMD? Any references for this?0 -
Image URLs - best practice
Hi - I'm assuming image URL best practice follows same principles as non image URLs (not too many files and so on) - I notice alot of web devs putting photos in subdomains, so wonder if I'm missing something (I usually avoid subdomains like the plague)!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
Replicating keywords in the URL - bad?
Our site URL structure used to be (example site) frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs-for-sale/blue-frogs wherefrogsforsale.com/cute-frogs-for-sale/ was in front of every URL on the site. We changed it by removing the for-sale part of the URL to be frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs/blue-frogs. Would that have hurt our rankings and traffic by removing the for-sale? Or was having for-sale in the URL twice (once in domain, again in URL) hurting our site? The business wants to change the URLs again to put for-sale back in, but in a new spot such as frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs/blue-frogs-for-sale as they are convinced that is the cause of the rankings and traffic drop. However the entire site was redesigned at the same time, the site architecture is very different, so it is very hard to say whether the traffic drop is due to this or not.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Canonical URL Tag
I have 3 websites with same content, I want to add Canonical tag to my main website. Is this also important to mentioned other duplicate URL in canonical tag in main website? or just need to just add
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marknorman0 -
Strange URLs, how do I fix this?
I've just check Majestic and have seen around 50 links coming from one of my other sites. The links all look like this: http://www.dwww.mysite.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters
http://www.eee.mysite.com
http://www.w.mysite.com The site these links are coming from is a html site. Any ideas whats going on or a way to get rid of these urls? When I visit the strange URLs such as http://www.dwww.mysite.com, it shows the home page of http://www.mysite.com. Is there a way to redirect anything like this back to the home page?0 -
URL for offline purposes
Hi there, We are going to be promoting one of our products offline, however I do not want to use the original URL for this product page as it's long for the user to type in, so I thought it would be best practice in using a URL that would be short, easier for the consumer to remember. My plan: Replicate the product page and put it on this new short URL, however this would mean I have a duplicate content issue, would It be best practice to use a canonical on the new short URL pointing to the original URL? or use a 301? Thanks for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Renaming multiple web pages
I'd like to rename about 20 web pages on one of my websites. If I do a 301 redirect for each of the pages will I get dinged by google for all of the renames?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dpdeleon10