URL Too Long vs. 301 Redirect
-
We have a small number of content pages where the urls paths were setup before we started looking really hard at SEO. The paths are longer than recommended (but not super crazy IMHO) and some of the pages get a decent amount of traffic.
Moz suggests updating the URLs to make them shorter but I wonder if anyone has experience with the tradeoffs here. Is it better to mark those issues to be ignored and just use good URLs going forward or would you suggest updating the URLs to something shorter and implementing a 301 redirect?
-
Hi there,
The general rule of thumb for URLs is that if the structure and layout makes sense from a user perspective then I wouldn't worry about losing any sleep over this.
A good guide to this can be found here (done by Mr Fishkin himself!) - https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
I hope this helps!
-
Hello,
As you said if it's not too crazy, for example slightly longer I wouldn't purposely change it for that sole reason. However, this might be a good opportunity to find what organic keywords that particular page is ranking for in the 5~10 position, then maybe you can refine your keyword, page content as well as URL to achieve a better ranking for the keyword with potential.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Joseph Yap -
If the current url's are sef (search engine friendly), and not bugging you, leave as is. If the url path is not sef, just implement 301's to a sef url. URL's do have an impact on ctr's in organics, so it may be worth polishing them up. Good luck!
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
-
301 Redirect and Canonical link tag pointing in opposite directions!
I'm working on a site which redirects the non-WWW version to WWW version so, for example https://website.com/page redirects to https://www.website.com/page However, canonical link tags have been set up on the page - pointing back to the non-WWW so for example Q - is this going to cause issues and should the canonical be updated to the same version as the redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SWEMII0 -
Unintentional wildcard 301 Redirect?
I have migrated a client's site to a new domain. I used Yoast tools to add 301 redirects for all active site pages from old domain to new domain in the .htacces files as neither the client nor I have access to hosting server via FTP (long story). Redirects are working as I intended, and we didn't lose too much in our rankings. Unfortunately, as soon as I saved the .htaccess file in Yoast, old-domain.net/wp-admin began redirecting to new-domain.net/wp-admin. I can no longer login to the wordpress site on the old domain. I did not enter a redirect for /wp-admin. Any thoughts on how this is happening or if there is some other way to get back in? Without server access, I'm pretty stumped. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | c_estep_tcbguy0 -
301 redirect with DNS?
Quick question. Is it possible to 301 redirect a non-www to www. (properly in terms of SEO) with DNS (C Name, A name, or other) ..have searched around and found conflicting information. Would like to know a definite answer. I usually implement all 301 redirects with htaccess. However have a client situation where we only have access to the CMS, but which does have DNS settings. thanks in advance, Greg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregDixson0 -
302 redirected URLs - login, account pages
We have a 302 redirection on some of our pages which involved login/account pages. So, some pages are 302 (temporarily) redirected to the login pages which is common especially in e-commerce sites (see screenshot). For SEO practices, what would be best to address this (if this an issue)? a. Block the login/account pages using robots.txt? b. Block the login/account pages using meta noindex? c. Leave them as is since it's a non-issue. d. Other recommendations, please specify in the answers.. Thanks! 2S9xn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Should I include URLs that are 301'd or only include 200 status URLs in my sitemap.xml?
I'm not sure if I should be including old URLs (content) that are being redirected (301) to new URLs (content) in my sitemap.xml. Does anyone know if it is best to include or leave out 301ed URLs in a xml sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonathan.Smith0 -
301 redirecting staff Domain to Company Domain
My colleague owns a domain (A) for about 10 years that he does not use. The domain's content is the same as my company's website (B) content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
Question: Can I 301 redirect domain A to domain B's homepage or is it better he just closes down his website since this would not be SEO best practices? thank you0 -
Remove URLs that 301 Redirect from Google's Index
I'm working with a client who has 301 redirected thousands of URLs from their primary subdomain to a new subdomain (these are unimportant pages with regards to link equity). These URLs are still appearing in Google's results under the primary domain, rather than the new subdomain. This is problematic because it's creating an artificial index bloat issue. These URLs make up over 90% of the URLs indexed. My experience has been that URLs that have been 301 redirected are removed from the index over time and replaced by the new destination URL. But it has been several months, close to a year even, and they're still in the index. Any recommendations on how to speed up the process of removing the 301 redirected URLs from Google's index? Will Google, or any search engine for that matter, process a noindex meta tag if the URL's been redirected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trung.ngo0 -
How do I set up a 301 redirect if the default settings for our web servers create multiple URLs for the same page?
How do I set up a 301 redirect if the default settings for our web servers create multiple URLs for the same page but only views it as one page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ibex0