MOZ flagging urls as longer than 75 characters when they aren't

[abtechgroup]

As an example:

https://www.abthermal.com/3m-70-70hdt-self-fusing-silicone-rubber-electrical-tape.html

Moz has flagged this as URL too long... but guideline is that happens at 75 characters or more?

I count 55..??  or does the 75 limit have to include the domain?

Thanks, Adrian

[abtechgroup]

Thank you for the reply and explanations.... much appreciated, Adrian

[jocameron]

Hi there Adrian,

Thanks for the question, Jo here from the Moz help team.

I've counted the characters in your url and I count 86, which would cause this to be flagged in our tool.

However I would point out that URL length and format for SEO is a bit of a balancing act. When considering URLs for SEO you want to make sure that the URL is simple enough to remember and understand for human visitors and that it accurately describes what is on the page.

If your URLs do this job, but are a bit longer than 75 characters, then I wouldn't be too concerned.

You do want to keep your eye out for URLs that are not within this basic structure:
http://www.example.com/category-keyword/subcategory-keyword/primary-keyword.html,
contain long and confusing codes, and are taking a hit in the rankings.

As I'm sure you're already aware, changing URLs is quite painful, as you need to make sure the old URLs are redirected and this adds more moving parts to your site that could cause problems down the line. So, if you're happy with the job your URLs are doing currently, but the tool flags these as too long, I would definitely consider holding off on making changes. It may be that you use this information to make amendments to future URLs, or rethink your site structure as part of a bigger project.

In the meantime you can "Ignore" those issue either by page or by Issue Type through the Moz Pro Site Crawl interface so they don't crop up every week. You can read more about this on our Help Hub.

Here are some resources on URL formatting and how to best structure them for SEO:

https://moz.com/community/q/what-should-be-the-length-of-page-url-from-seo-perspective
https://moz.com/learn/seo/url
https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls

I'm here to help if you have any other queries.
Cheers!