Hi there,

I'm assuming you're using Wordpress? I think having the categories in the URL is a must if you're trying to rank and the category is one of your keywords for your website.

Personally, if I was having trouble with long URL's for the longer post titles (e.g. How to gain 1000 genuine followers on twitter, quickly and free == domain.com/social-media-tutorials/twitter/How-to-gain-1000-genuine-followers-on-twitter-quickly-and-free") I would probably remove certain generic words from the URL that Google wouldn't even search for anyway, so that my URL structure would become: domain.com/social-media/twitter/how-to/gain-1000-genuine-followers-twitter-free or words to that effect.

You are able to change the URL of the post (within Wordpress) as you Publish your post (under the post title field).

Hope this is of some help!

Tom

That's right.

A soft 404 is still a missing document, but it allows the user to continue through the pages without leaving the website.

Tom

Hi there,

What Wesley said is true to a certain extent. This would probably be the best way to do it (301 Redirect) but as an owner of many eCommerce companies, I'd have to disagree. Mainly on the basis that a "soft 404" would be more generally accepted than just being redirected to the homepage for no explanation to why.

Here's an example, your client is selling TV's online and they're using Magento Enterprise. Let's pretend that they have a TV from Sony, it's a 62" LED SmartTV, Full HD, the works and your client has 200 of these in stock and they're selling them around $/£300 cheaper than the competition. The link gets shared around amongst Facebook, Twitter, HotUkDeals etc.

So let's say after just 7 days, they sell out of this awesome offer... Somebody see's the link late (Facebook, Twitter, etc, it happens) and when they click on that link the website loads but the product doesn't, they just see the homepage. They're going to waste around 15 minutes perhaps searching for that product that you and I both know, doesn't exist anymore.

So what we tend to do, is create a "soft 404" page, which is basically a page apologising for the missing product, explaining that it may be out of stock, temporarily removed from the website etc, but at the same time we will have an array of SIMILAR products that may interest someone who wanted a 62" LED Full HD SmartTV.

I don't know whether I'd say this is a great SEO advantage or a great marketing advantage, but either way, in my personal opinion, I'd say this is a much better option than just pointing the customer/browser to the homepage when they are in search of something specific and don't get a reason to why they're seeing the homepage and not the fantastic offer they've seen!

Hope this answer helps you, even if it's just insightful!

Tom