Should you shorten very long URLs?

[CalamityJane77]

Hi Moz Community!

If the nav architecture URL is long, like this:

https://www.savewildlife.org/wildlife-conservtion/endangered-species-act-protections/endangered-species-list/birds/mexican-spotted-owl

can I and should I shorten that new destination URL to make it easy for Google to see that the page topic is really the owl, like this:

https://savewildlife.org/endangered-species-list/mexican-spotted-owl

Thank you! Jane

[katemorris]

That is a long URL, but I don't think shortening it will help in terms of SEO. Google is generally good at understanding the structure of your site without the structure of URLs. They are also good at determining the topic without the use of the URL. In my experience, the work from changing the URL is more than it would help.

If you find a reason to change the URL structure in the future that is very necessary (new CMS as an example), update the structure then. Until then, unless you are getting feedback from your users that it is annoying them, I'd leave them as is.

[Zohaibkhannn]

It’s easier than you might expect to set up custom shortened URLs for your brand. Though it might be an extra step to run your links through a link shortener, there are many benefits associated with the practice, including tracking and making URLs easy to remember.

[GastonRiera]

Hi Jane!

There is no correct answer here. In the examples you gave there is a big difference between them: The number of folders.
4 folders vs just 1.

The are some miths and some experiments stating that both long and short URLs rank really good.
In my opinion, I'd go for a middle in those two: 2-3 folders with less words each folders.

You should focus in the experience you are providing the user and if each of those folders represent a section in your site. 
This is just a wild guess:
yoursite.com/conservation/endangered-species/birds/mexican-spotted-owl
It looks like /endangered-species-act-protections/ and /endangered-species-list/ are the same category/folder. I'd remove the latter.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR