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
-
Internal links: How do I find keywords that are not linked to a URL?
Hi Moz members I'd really like to place an internal link of every instance of an important keyword phrase "cycling caps" or "cycling cap" to my eComm category page
Link Building | | andystorey
https://www.prendas.co.uk/collections/headwear/cotton-caps I feel this would not only help my customers browsing my store, but I believe it will help from an SEO perspective. How can I search my site using Moz, Screaming Frog, Google etc to find every time cycling cap(s) is used but is not linked to the above URL? I can then apply the same for cycling jerseys, socks, etc Andy0 -
Domain seo vs subdomain
when building links is it better to link to the main domain (www.aabbccarpetcleaning.com) or www.aabbcccarpetcleaning/carpet-rug-cleaning
Link Building | | dhanson240 -
How long does it take Google to give value to a backlink?
Hi Once Google indexes your backlink does it pass value to that link straight away? Before i was under the impression once backlinks were created (providing they were good links) you wouldn't see any value or the serp climb for 6/10 months, is that still the case? Reason i ask is we're link building for a summer item and most if the back links are being indexed within a few days by Google. If the backlinks are given value by Google once indexed then we'll carry on till late summer. If its 6/10 months to be recognized we may start moving onto something else. Advice would be appreciated.
Link Building | | neenan10 -
Same Page, Multiple URLS- Canonical tag? Redirect?
I just read this article about how google views multiple versions of the same page as different pages of duplicate content. My website, www.telikin.com currently has many versions of the home page. There is: www.telikin.com
Link Building | | Telikin
www.telikin.com/index
www.telikin.com/index.php
www.telikin.com/index.php/ All of these seem to be their own URLS, If i use the open site explorer tool to search for links pointing to these URLS, the www.telikin.com domain shows about 700 links, and the www.telikin.com/index.php shows about 63 links. My questions: Is my SEO suffering as a result of having these different pages? Does google realize that links pointing to www.telikin.com/index.php should count towards the seo of the www.telikin.com page? If this is hurting my company's website, how do I solve this problem? I am not versed as a webmaster, so I don't understand what the best course of action would be. Should I request that our webmaster somehow redirects all traffic from the other URLS to the main www.telikin.com URL? Should I be using canonical tags on all important pages? If i do, for example, use a canonical tag on the www.telikin.com page, will Google then know to send all link juice from the www.telikin.com/index.php page to the www.telikin.com page? We also have a Joomla blog that seems to duplicate pages many times over, but that is a problem that I will have to address another time. Any comments/suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks, Dave0 -
Has anyone every researched how long before a link took effect.....
What I mean is lets assume you were to get a link from BBC or CNN how long does it take for that link to have a positive impact on your rankings? I ask because I am experiment with getting links from different sources and I want to try and nail down their real worth..... Also if you do get a link is it normal that google would crawl your site and if so do you see this reflected in googles cache immediately? Thanks
Link Building | | RankStealer0 -
Good and Bad of Comment Hut?
Hi All, A new client in a competitive market (international car hire - Car Trawler affiliate) is using Comment Hut to gain links to his site. I have not used this service so am wondering, with the latest google stuff, what the good the bad and the ugly is on the comment hut service. Does it work? Should we avoid it? Thanks in advance Steve
Link Building | | stevecounsell0 -
How do i remove bad links ?
Google have sent me an email regarding manipulativre link or paid link etc. Tey are asking me to fix the issue then resubmit my site for consideration. My site IS still in the search results but i suspect that they may remove it soon. I suspect that a competitor may have a contact in google andthey are submitting complaints against my business but we do have many link to my site . How am i going to know exactly what link are the problem.
Link Building | | SydneyMove0 -
Longer Tail Keyword for URL and Anchor text
Hello If I am trying to rank for the term blue widgets as a primary, and also the term shiny blue widgets , and big shiny blue widgets as secondary - would the url /blue-widgets or /shiny-blue-widgets or /big-shiny-blue-widgets be better (all else equal) Would the word shiny / big dilute or affect of KW in the domain for the rankings for blue widgets (all esle equal) Regarding anchor text of inbound links, if the anchor text is shiny blue widgets, is that going to help me rank for both queries "blue widgets" and "shiny blue widgets" equally? (all else equal), or would including shiny, affect my ranking for "bliue widgets" Or is it better to keep the anchor text as just blue widgets (of course we could vary it) but Im trying to get a feel for how that would work as we are builfing some links I can control the anchor text. I hope this was clear enough Thanks Sam
Link Building | | Impact-2015550