Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What's the SEO impact of url suffixes?
-
Is there an advantage/disadvantage to adding an .html suffix to urls in a CMS like WordPress. Plugins exist to do it, but it seems better for the user to leave it off. What do search engines prefer?
-
After I finished work, I will dig through my history and can hopefully deliver.
Update: I spent 1 hour going through my browser history and I was not able to find it. Kinda freaks me out. Sorry.
-
I would love to see the study if you can find the link later. I agree sometimes study results conflict with prior conceptions and I have been mistaken before, but those study results really sound counter intuitive.
-
There are actually some studies that can be found on the internet that suggest that the CTR correlates with the extension shown on the SERP, namely .html is supposedly having a positive impact on the CTR of up to 200%.
I was trying hard to find the website I read it on, but on the quick I couldn't find it. It contained a "study" on it with eyetracking and it made sense.
I've personally never run a test on it, but I decided to add html to our documents by means of Mod Rewrite.
As far as search engines are concerned, it does not matter at all. But overall, the visitor should be more important and seeing that it does not negatively impact rankings, it's worth a try.
-
When possible, always remove the .html or any technology suffix such as .php, .htm, etc. A few reasons:
-
this information offers no value to users nor search engines
-
it needlessly increases the length of your URL
-
it offers hackers an additional piece of information about your web server files. You want to make the bad guys work as hard as possible
-
it helps a lot with SEO when you change technologies. There is good reason for .html pages to move to .php pages. When that change is made, all the pages on a site need to be 301'd. The entire process is a big waste of link juice for the entire site which could be avoided if the technology extension did not exist. While .html and .php pages are common today, next year .seo pages might be the popular extension.
-
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
-
My Website's Home Page is Missing on Google SERP
Hi All, I have a WordPress website which has about 10-12 pages in total. When I search for the brand name on Google Search, the home page URL isn't appearing on the result pages while the rest of the pages are appearing. There're no issues with the canonicalization or meta titles/descriptions as such. What could possibly the reason behind this aberration? Looking forward to your advice! Cheers
Technical SEO | | ugorayan0 -
SEO advice on ecommerce url structure where categories contain "/c/"
Hi! We use Hybris as plattform and I would like input on which url to choose. We must keep "/c/" before the actual category. c stands for category. I.e. this current url format will be shortened and cleaned:
Technical SEO | | hampgunn
https://www.granngarden.se/Sortiment/Husdjur/Hund/Hundfoder-%26-Hundmat/c/hundfoder To either: a.
https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/hundfoder/c/hundfoder b.
https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/c/hundfoder (hundfoder means dogfood) The question is whether we should keep the duplicated category name (hundfoder) before the "/c/" or not. Will there be SEO disadvantages by removing the duplicate "hundfoder" before the "/c/"? I prefer the shorter version ofc, but do not want to jeopardize any SEO rankings or send confusing signals to search engines or customers due to the "/c/" breaking up the url breadcrumb. What do you guys say and prefer from the above alternatives? Thanks /Hampus0 -
Problem with Yoast not seeing any of this website's text/content
Hi, My client has a new WordPress site http://www.londonavsolutions.co.uk/ and they have installed the Yoast Premium SEO plug-in. They are having issues with getting the lights to go green and the main problem is that on most pages Yoast does not see any words/content – although there are plenty of words on the pages. Other tools can see the words, however Yoast is struggling to find any and gives the following message:- Bad SEO score. The text contains 0 words. This is far below the recommended minimum of 300 words. Add more content that is relevant for the topic. Readability - You have far too little content. Please add some content to enable a good analysis. They have contacted the website developer who says that there is nothing wrong, but they are frustrated that they cannot use the Yoast tools themselves because of this issue, plus Yoast are offering no support with the issue. I hope that one of you guys has seen this problem before, or can spot a problem with the way the site has been built and can perhaps shed some light on the problem. I didn't build the site myself so won't be offended if you spot problems with it. Thanks in advance, Ben
Technical SEO | | bendyman0 -
URL Structure On Site - Currently it's domain/product-name NOT domain/category/product name is this bad?
I have a eCommerce site and the site structure is domain/product-name rather than domain/product-category/product-name Do you think this will have a negative impact SEO Wise? I have seen that some of my individual product pages do get better rankings than my categories.
Technical SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
SEO-optimized Urls for Japan: English or Japanese Characters
Hi, Anyone got experience with Japanese Urls? I'm currently working on the relaunch of the Japanese site of the troteclaser.com and I wonder if we should use English or Japanese characters for the Urls. I found some topics on the forums about this, but they only tell you that Google can crawl both without problems. The question is if there is a benefit if Japanese characters are used.
Technical SEO | | Troteclaser1 -
Javascript to manipulate Google's bounce rate and time on site?
I was referred to this "awesome" solution to high bounce rates. It is suppose to "fix" bounce rates and lower them through this simple script. When the bounce rate goes way down then rankings dramatically increase (interesting study but not my question). I don't know javascript but simply adding a script to the footer and watch everything fall into place seems a bit iffy to me. Can someone with experience in JS help me by explaining what this script does? I think it manipulates the reporting it does to GA but I'm not sure. It was supposed to be placed in the footer of the page and then sit back and watch the dollars fly in. 🙂
Technical SEO | | BenRWoodard1 -
Sharepoint SEO - How to lowercase urls with rewrite rules?
We have a borked website running on sharepoint IIS .net that has been at the mercy of many bad developers We have rewrite rules with an ini file for 301s etc. We are struggling to find out or figure out how to lowercase them The lowercase functionality may be native within sharepoint somewhere Any help appreciated! Sorry its so vague S
Technical SEO | | firstconversion0 -
What's the difference between a category page and a content page
Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? ( I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0