Spammy? Long URLs
-
Hi All:
Is it true that URLs such as this following one are viewed as "spammy" (besides being too long) and that such URLs will negatively affect ranks for keywords and page ranks:
My thinking is that the page will perform better once it is 301 redirected to a shorter page name, such as:
http://www.repairsuniverse.com/ipod-touch-1G-replacement-parts.html
It also appears that these long URLs are also more likely to break, creating unnecessary 404s.
<colgroup><col width="301"></colgroup>
Thanks for your insight on this issue!
-
The issue is the repetition of words more than anything. There's no justification or rationalization that can be used to say "this long URL is valid from a readability or a page topical focus perspective. In fact, it can both make the site look untrustworthy to some users, and potentially cause search engines to flag the page as "over" optimized - going too far with keyword repetition is definitely something that can cause a page to lose some of it's ranking value.
-
Thanks Ryan for your helpful insight and confirmation of my suspicions!
These URLs were created before I came into the project.
The .html extension is automatically added by the Yahoo Store page builder, so I'm not sure I can change that.
Cheers
Phil
-
Hello Phillip,
I found it convenient your question appeared after the WBF by Cyrus on the 29th regarding title tag length.
If you look at the transcript about half way down, the header is: "Best Practices are Guidelines not Rules." I think you are talking of a best practice and not a hard and fast rule. By going to about 15 of your pages none of the other urls are that longIf you look at your url here and the url for Cyrus' WBF, yours is roughly 20 to 25 characters longer. Given his is over 80 characters, I don't see yours as being significantly different.
If you go to Google WM blog it speaks to not having session ID's and using a 301 to redirect to a clean url. Given that you do not have hundreds of urls that appear to be built for a search engine, I do not believe it becomes an issue to Google.
With the 301 you have a better url and, beyond the occasional 404 from the lengthy url, you have a customer friendly url which is what the customers like. If you make it easy to get around and to find what they are looking for, they are more apt to buy in my opinion.
Best of luck.
-
The first URL you shared definitely appears spammy. A URL is not the place to stuff keywords. A short, accurate description as you shared in the second example is helpful.
A properly presented URL is a minor ranking factor. It can affect your search result position, but it is unlikely to make a difference in most cases. It affects Click Through Rates much more. In search results and other places users have very little information upon which to base a decision. Many users simply wont select a spammy URL.
As you shared, a spammy URL is much harder to remember. No user could reasonably remember your first URL. Your second URL is short enough where some people could remember it, especially if they were regular visitors on your site.
A last note, remove the technology extension of your URL. It is not helpful not users nor search engines to know it is an html page. Take a look at the URL of this Q&A page. It is a great example: www.seomoz.org/q/spammy-long-urls. There is no .html nor .php type of extension tacked onto the end. Just a short, clean and memorable URL.
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
-
¿Disallow duplicate URL?
Hi comunity, thanks for answering my question. I have a problem with a website. My website is: http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1 (good URL) but i have 2 filters to show something and this generate 2 URL's more: http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=true (if we put 1 filter) http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=false (if we put other filter) My question is, should i put in robots.txt disallow for these filters like this: **Disallow: /*?show=***
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thekiller990 -
Replicating keywords in the URL - bad?
Our site URL structure used to be (example site) frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs-for-sale/blue-frogs wherefrogsforsale.com/cute-frogs-for-sale/ was in front of every URL on the site. We changed it by removing the for-sale part of the URL to be frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs/blue-frogs. Would that have hurt our rankings and traffic by removing the for-sale? Or was having for-sale in the URL twice (once in domain, again in URL) hurting our site? The business wants to change the URLs again to put for-sale back in, but in a new spot such as frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs/blue-frogs-for-sale as they are convinced that is the cause of the rankings and traffic drop. However the entire site was redesigned at the same time, the site architecture is very different, so it is very hard to say whether the traffic drop is due to this or not.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
For how long does Google honor a 302 redirect?
Greetings! I would love some recent experiences to support our experience which is +/- 1 year old on this question. Based on our experiences around a year ago, I believe that Google will only honor a 302 temporary redirect for a relatively short period - perhaps up to a month - and then it will begin treating the redirect as a 301 redirect and will remove the old page from the index. Have others seen this? Is there an update on what the max "safe" period to have a 302 in place could be? We have a domain that is soon to experience about 3 months of "downtime" with no content on it, but the content will be back after that time. Ideally we would 302 redirect the pages elsewhere just for that downtime period. However, I don't want to do a 302 redirect if there is a risk that the pages will lose all of their accumulated authority and indexing. Basically, is there any safe way to just put the domain on ice for a few months? Please share recent experience only. Thanks for your insights!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | g-s-m0 -
Canonical URL Tag
I have 3 websites with same content, I want to add Canonical tag to my main website. Is this also important to mentioned other duplicate URL in canonical tag in main website? or just need to just add
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marknorman0 -
Url structure of a blog
We are trying to work out what the best structure for our blog is as we want each page to rank as highly as possible, we were looking at a flat structure similar to http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/ where every posts is after the blog/ but not in category's although the viewers can look in different category's from the top buttons on the page- photoshop - icons etc or we where going to go for the structured way- blog/photoshop/blog-post.html the only problem is that we will end up 4 deep at least with this and at least 80 characters in the url. any help would be appreciated. Thanks Shaun
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Repeat name and location in URL or no ?
in this url www.stjeromemitsubishi.ca, is it a good thing to repeat the name and location in the url but with ''-''sign between? ex: www.stjeromemitsubishi.ca/partsandservice/stjerome-mitsubishi-contact.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidPilon0 -
Spammy Link Profile Questions. What do you think?
I'm trying to dilute the link profile for a website. But have a couple of questions on the best way to achieve this. Current link profile, www.mysitename.com Keyword 1 Keyword 2 Keyword 3 Keyword 4 Keyword 5 Keyword 6 Keyword 7 Keyword 8 Keyword 9 Keyword 10 Keyword 12 Keyword 13 Keyword 14 Keyword 14 Keyword 15 mysitename.com Desired link profile, www.mysitename.com mysitename.com www.mysitename.com http://www. mysitename.com/ My Site Name http://mysitename.com Click Here my site name More Info mysitename.com/ www.mysitename.com/ Keyword 1 Keyword 2 Keyword 3 Keyword 4 Keyword 4 Keyword 5 Questions 1. Do you think Google looks at this on a domain level? Or do you think this needs to be done with every page on the site? 2. What would be a good way to build links fast to the pages, need to build lots of links to be able to dilute the profile. I was considering Dripable, or a similar service, but decided i really don't want to create more spam.What would you do? 3. What would you say the % threshold for anchor text is, i have read on different sources that at least 40% - 60% of links should be branded, url, or generic anchor links. Do you think this is accurate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 858-SEO0 -
Service Keyword in URL - too much?
We're working on revamping the URL structure for a site from the ground up. This firm provides a service and has a library of case studies to back up their work. Here's some options on URL structure: 1. /cases/[industry keyword]-[service keyword] (for instance: /cases/retail-pest-control) There is some search traffic for the industry/service combination, so that would be the benefit of using both in URL. But we'd end up with about 70 pages with the same service keyword at the end. 2. /cases/[industry keyword] (/cases/retail) Shorter, less spam potential, but have to optimize for the service keyword -- the primary -- in another way. 3. /cases/clientname (/cases/wehaveants) No real keyword potential but better usability. We also want the service keyword to rank on its own on another page (so, a separate "pest control" page). So don't want to dilute that page's value even after we chase some of the long tail traffic. Any thoughts on the best course of action? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdcomms1