Short URL's vs Optimised URL's

[MozAddict]

Howdy Mozzers!

What are your thoughts on short URL's vs Optimised URL's. For example if a website currently sells wood furniture and wants to target the keyword "Wood Furniture For Sale", which URL would be preferable:

Short URL: www.domain.com/wood-furniture

Optimised URL: www.domain.com/wood-furniture-for-sale

The website also uses facet navigation and selected attributes are added in a fixed order sequence after the category. For example if Cane is selected as wood type:

Short URL: www.domain.com/wood-furniture/Cane

Optimised URL: www.domain.com/wood-furniture-for-sale/Cane

Which one do you prefer (between the short URL and optimised URL) and why?

Cheers!

MozAddict

[MozAddict]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for contributing your thoughts. I think keywords in URL's are useful in two ways

1. They give an indication to users what the page is about

2. They give an indication to search engines what the page is about

Although the keywords "Cane wood furniture for sale" can be used in the Meta Title, H1 tag and onsite content, I don't see any harm in adding them to the URL as an additional indicator, other than the downside of increasing the URL length.

So I suppose it depends on whether google gives more preference to keywords in URL's over their length or vice versa

[kwoolf]

Man, that sure seems like splitting hairs but I've literally spent days trying to decide the answer to this very question. I personally just try to get into my customer's head and try to figure out what would be the more likely search term. I'm leaning toward the optimized URL simply because if I'm looking to buy wood furniture, I'd be more likely to search for "wood furniture for sale." Then again, you might have custom wood furniture, or antique wood furniture, or maybe you restore or refinish wood furniture.

At the end of this, one is just going to have to go with the URL people might most likely search for. But then that's just the URL. You can mention all of those key words on that page, which should then rank fairly well for wood furniture. After Google works it's magic behind (now) closed doors to see who searches for what and then bounces out of your site, then you'll start ranking organically for the words that get the best results for your mix. If you get the recipe wrong, you'll see it in the SERPs (or not) and you can edit or add to your page later.

My thoughts only.