Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Are long URLs bad for SEO?
-
Hi,
I would like to know how bad is the long URLs that I have on my website.
At the moment we have 543 long urls and I was wondering how big is the impact in my SEO.
Thank you
-
After 512 pixels, Google will truncate your URL in search results pages. A good rule of thumb is to keep your URLs as short as you can, without losing their general meaning.
-
thanks you for information
-
I am about 100% sure that had to with applying your keyword into the URL. I still haven't really been able to find any concrete information on how having to long of a keyword effects rankings. I currently have a customer who decided to put all these dimensions into his product URL's making them way to long. I just want to know if it's worth the work to go in and shorten all of those and remove the dimensions.
-
Good question, I have about 300 pages with long URL, but I wonder, what is better here, to have long URLs or a lot of 301 redirects? Which option will make less harm?
Thanks
-
Like most things in SEO, it depends. There was an industry case study that Brian Dean often references, where they determined that shorter URLs tended to rank higher on Google. We have a personal example of this-
When trying to get our https://seo-kansas-city.com/services/google-adwords-campaigns/ to rank for the local term "PPC Kansas City", we decided to shorten the URL and include the keyword in it, with a proper 301 redirection in place from the old to the new URL, we changed it to https://seo-kansas-city.com/services/ppc/, which shortened the URL by about 25 characters.
Granted the keyword now being in the URL string helped us as well, but doing this one change took our Google ranking from the bottom of page 2 on Google to the middle of page 1 on Google, and we still rank on page 1 for "PPC Kansas City".
In summary, I am a believer in shorter, keyword-focused URLs and definitely recommend trying to shorten some if you can!
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
-
What Should be the URL of third party blog for my website
Hi All, What Should be the URL of third party blog for my website. Lets say if i have a website xyz.com (which provide pest control services in New York City) and I want to create third party blogs on platforms like blogspot, weebly etc so should i create the blog url as xyz.blogspot.com or i can use a keyword in the blog URL such as pestcontrolnyc.blogspot.com? Which URL would be the best as per Google's guidelines. Note: I have already have a blog within the domain as xyz.com/blog/ and i do weekly posting on this blog. But at the same time i want to create 1-2 third party blogs to get some backlinks from other sources.
Link Building | | Mr.Suren0 -
Empty href damages SEO? (href="#")
Hello, I'm analyzing a website with thousands of pages.
Link Building | | prozis
I realized that on many of them they have empty links such href="#". I wonder if that will cause any SEO damage, or if Google will just ignore it as there isn't any link? I was reading about it and people seems to not be sure, although they recommend on forums to user the CSS pointer clickable instead of empty link. Let me know your opinion on this please! Thank you in advance!0 -
URL parameters affecting link juice
I have a couple of quirks in my online shop that I'm ironing out. One of them is adding some URL parameters to product links.ie: website.com/product.html?&cat=0&featured=Y If someone links to this URL, will I get the link juice as if it was website.com/product.html ? I have URL parameters in Webmaster Tools and robots.txt set up to ignore them so they're not in the Google index, but I have found a few websites that have linked to us using these longer URL's and I'm wondering whether to write to them and ask them if they mind changing them or not.
Link Building | | sparrowdog0 -
Listly and SEO
We use listly quite a lot. A few of our lists get embedded in other sites. A lot of the embedded lists have links back to us. Is there any seo benefit on this, or will just one of the sites count ? Isn't this just duplicate content ? Wondering what your thoughts are.
Link Building | | MarkQJones0 -
Does blocking domains help remove bad links?
I have affiliate websites that are harming for one of 2 reasons: 1. They are on adult websites (and I don't want to be in a bad neighborhood) or 2. They are using a Frameset (so their content appears identical to mine and I am getting "credit" for all their junk links) I cannot get these websites to remove our links so I have blocked their IPs on our production firewall. Is this an effective method or should I do something else with these links?
Link Building | | theLotter0 -
URL shortener and backlinks
Are there any SEO benefits drawn from creating backlinks with Google url shortener service(especially for the very deep links) or for the do-follow link juice I have to use a complete address?
Link Building | | SirMax0 -
Link Directories - Good or bad?
I've just done a search on open site explorer for a competitors site that has is ranked number one. Most of their highest authority backlinks are from link directories. I just read an article on here saying to stay away from directories that state things like 'seo friendly directory'. Many of my competitors links are from these kind of sites! Will it harm me to get links from such sites? It seems to be working for my competitors.... confused.com!
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
How long does it take for link juice to pass
If I were to receive a follow link from a blogger with DA 40 PA 40 today, relevant anchor text linking to correct page, etc., how long do you consider it takes until maximum SEO effect is achieved? Thanks
Link Building | | seanmccauley0