Will I loose from SEO if I rename my urls to be more keyword friendly?
-
As a good practice of SEO is to have your keywords in the links. I am thinking of doing some optimization and change my urls to more effective keywords. I am using shopify and there is an option (a tick) that you can check while changing the url (ex. for a category, for a product, for a blog post). This will give a redirection to the old post to the new.
Is it good practice? Is it risky for losing SEO or it will help to rank higher because I will have better keywords in my links?
-
I will check those guides and see how I can work on optimizations. Thank you.
-
Hi Spiros
Below are two guides that may assist in your URL structure. It appears the site is not ranking for target keywords so a re-structure is maybe beneficial. It is an ideal practice to have the target customer query in the URL structure. Shopify though has limitations so may need to work within them.
https://www.hostgator.com/blog/best-url-structure-seo/
https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
The next step will 301'ing the old page to the new page.
Hope that helps.
-
If my pages were ranking top 20 keywords I would use tools like MOZ! So no they are not ranking top 20 and I want to achieve this....
-
Spiros
The first rule of seo - is to do no harm. Sometimes when you optimise a site as per "best practice" - then you lose rankings. It is important to protect the keywords that matter that you already rank for.
So an initial step is an audit.
Perhaps I will reframe. - is the page you want to change the URL for ranking in the top 20 positions for the keyword you are targeting for?
Regards
-
Obviously, I want to change the URL in order to optimize for a better keyword and not fix broken links. So you are saying that it will hurt SEO? I am using moz tools because SEO in not 100% optimized for my site. So I don't think my pages are ranking well. And ranking well is related to the specific keyword you want to rank for a page. An "expert" from MOZ told me that it can take like 5-10 months to see results from SEO actions. Then this is not measurable...I can't fix something today "ex a URL" and wait 10 months! I will need a more specific answer!
-
HI
If it is not broken - you do not fix it. So the first question is, how is the site ranking today for the customer query/ies you are targetting? If you are ranking well, then likely do not touch urls.
Regards
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
-
Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website?
Hi, Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Clean URL help!
Hi all, In short, i'm looking to redirect examplepage.html to examplepage .I've got rid of the .html, sitewide this morning. However I want to redirect Google & people who have bookmarked the old url structure. Currently if you have the extension on or not, it will show in your browser. I'm wanting /examplepage.html to 301 redirect to /examplepage I've gone the normal way I'd do it by adding in .htaccess: Redirect 301 /examplepage.html http://www.example.com/examplepage I'm assuming it isn't redirecting as the example.html page is no longer... what is the way around this? Thanks for any help! In firefox the error of the page is: The page isn't redirecting properly Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whittie0 -
Will Canonical tag on parameter URLs remove those URL's from Index, and preserve link juice?
My website has 43,000 pages indexed by Google. Almost all of these pages are URLs that have parameters in them, creating duplicate content. I have external links pointing to those URLs that have parameters in them. If I add the canonical tag to these parameter URLs, will that remove those pages from the Google index, or do I need to do something more to remove those pages from the index? Ex: www.website.com/boats/show/tuna-fishing/?TID=shkfsvdi_dc%ficol (has link pointing here)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | partnerf
www.website.com/boats/show/tuna-fishing/ (canonical URL) Thanks for your help. Rob0 -
Local SEO tips
Hi! I'm working on http://www.hgsplumbingandheating.co.uk/ at the moment, and it's going pretty well for local terms such as 'Norwich plumber' etc. Has anyone got any tips though on how it can be improved, especially with regard to getting the homepage ranking above the Places listings? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
What will the effect of normalising the case of my URLs be?
Hi all, I have a web site with a selection of pages with excellent rankings, mostly in the top 3 for the keywords we want to rank for. Currently, the URLs are mostly presented mixed case, like this: www.mydomain.com/Type/ITEM-IDENTIFIER/ However we have problems of different cases being used in different parts of our application, and also it's obviously not that attractive the way it is. What we are proposing to do is deploy a change to our web site that lowercases all URLs in internal links, as well as present the URLs in lowercase in our sitemap.xml, and provide any links to partners from this point on in lowercase format. We are also proposing to 301 redirect any non-lowercase URLs to the lowercase version. These pages already have a canonical link tag due to us hosting different versions of these pages on multiple domains, for skinning purposes. The link in the canonical link tag will also be changed to be lowercase. What I am concerned about is, URLs of the case above have been in the rankings for a few years now, and if all of a sudden our links are all lowercase, will they drop off the rankings? Or will the above measures mean that the pagerank is transferred to the lowercase version of the URL? Thanks in advance, James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeeTickets0 -
SEO Provider
At the risk of opening the flood gates, I'm posting this in hopes of finding a SEO provider on this site. I'm currently a member, and have learned a lot through this site, but I'm still having issues ranking higher. Because of this, I have come to the conclusion that I need a dedicated SEO company/professional who can help our company reach the next level. I'm open to suggestions of companies that you have used, or please feel free to throw your hat into the ring. Thanks in advance! AW
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheCTC0 -
Lots of incorrect urls indexed - Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site
Hi, Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Basically, our rankings and traffic etc have been dropping massively recently google sent us a message stating " Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site". This first highligted us to the problem that for some reason our eCommerce site has recently generated loads (potentially thousands) of rubbish urls hencing giving us duplication everywhere which google is obviously penalizing us with in the terms of rankings dropping etc etc. Our developer is trying to find the route cause of this but my concern is, How do we get rid of all these bogus urls ?. If we use GWT to remove urls it's going to take years. We have just amended our Robot txt file to exclude them going forward but they have already been indexed so I need to know do we put a redirect 301 on them and also a HTTP Code 404 to tell google they don't exist ? Do we also put a No Index on the pages or what . what is the best solution .? A couple of example of our problems are here : In Google type - site:bestathire.co.uk inurl:"br" You will see 107 results. This is one of many lot we need to get rid of. Also - site:bestathire.co.uk intitle:"All items from this hire company" Shows 25,300 indexed pages we need to get rid of Another thing to help tidy this mess up going forward is to improve on our pagination work. Our Site uses Rel=Next and Rel=Prev but no concanical. As a belt and braces approach, should we also put concanical tags on our category pages whereby there are more than 1 page. I was thinking of doing it on the Page 1 of our most important pages or the View all or both ?. Whats' the general consenus ? Any advice on both points greatly appreciated? thanks Sarah.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
URL Length or Exact Breadcrumb Navigation URL? What's More Important
Basically my question is as follows, what's better: www.romancingdiamonds.com/gemstone-rings/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (this would fully match the breadcrumbs). or www.romancingdiamonds.com/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (cutting out the first level folder to keep the url shorter and the important keywords are closer to the root domain). In this question http://www.seomoz.org/qa/discuss/37982/url-length-vs-url-keywords I was consulted to drop a folder in my url because it may be to long. That's why I'm hesitant to keep the bradcrumb structure the same. To the best of your knowldege do you think it's best to drop a folder in the URL to keep it shorter and sweeter, or to have a longer URL and have it match the breadcrumb structure? Please advise, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Romancing0