Removing dashes in our URLs?
-
Hi Forum,
Our site has an errant product review module that is resulting in about 9-10 404 errors per day on Google Webmaster Tools. We've found that by changing our product page URLs to only include 2 dashes, the module stops causing 404 errors for that page.
Does changing our URL from "oursite.com/girls-pink-yoga-capri.html" to "oursite.com/girlspink-yoga-capri.html" hurt our SEO for a search for "girls pink yoga capri"? If so, by how much (assuming everthing else on the page is optimized properly)
Thanks for your input.
-
I would dich the module and get one that works
-
But the URL is just a small factor in the greater scheme of things, and for humans, having a readable title tag would influence the CTR so much more than the URL missing a dash.
-
It shouldn't; search engines can isolate strings without separators. However, how many people do you think actually type 'girls pink yoga capri' or are you just being hypothetical?
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
-
Should We Remove Content Through Google Webmaster Tools?
We recently collapsed an existing site in order to relaunch it as a much smaller, much higher quality site. In doing so, we're facing some indexation issues whereas a large number of our old URLs (301'd where appropriate) still show up for a site:domain search. Some relevant notes: We transitioned the site from SiteCore to Wordpress to allow for greater flexibility The Wordpress CMS went live on 11/22 (same legacy content, but in the new CMS) The new content (and all required 301s) went live on 12/2 The site's total number of URLS is currently at 173 (confirmed by ScreamingFrog) As of posting this question, a site:domain search shows 6,110 results While it's a very large manual effort, is there any reason to believe that submitting removal requests through Google Webmaster Tools would be helpful? We simply want all indexation of old pages and content to disappear - and for Google to treat the site as a new site on the same old domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d50-Media0 -
Removing www from printed and digital
I wanted to make sure there will be no negative SEO implications if we change all ‘www.fdmgroup.com' references (printed and digital)?After some Googling, apparently some search engines regard www.fdmgroup.com and fdmgroup.com as two different websites and split SEO rankings (quote me if i’m wrong!).To date, a lot (if not all) of our online presence (e.g. adverts, banner links etc) use www.fdmgroup.com (both visually and in HTML markup) so these would also need updating to remove the 'www'.What are your thoughts? For the sake of SEO and canonical/duplicate content/ranking issues etc, would changing all www.fdmgroup.com references have a negative effect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fdmgroup0 -
URL for offline use.
Hi there, We currently have a url www.example.com/health/back-pain/ We are wanting to promote this page on our product packaging however making the URL simpler www.example.com/back-pain/ is it just a case of using a 301? are there any issues here? Thanks for any feedback
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Removing old versions of a page.
Recently one of my good friends updated his iweb based screen printing site to wordpress per my recommendation. This update has helped dramatically boost his rankings to #3 for most local keywords. This new site is now V5 of his site, but all older iweb versions are still on the ftp. There are a total of 209 pages on the ftp, as versions of about 30 actual pages. The pages have changed significantly with each update, leaving very little duplicate content, but the old ones are still on the google index. Would it hurt the rankings to clean up these older versions & 301 redirect to the new versions, or should we leave them? The site for reference is: http://takeholdprinting.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GoogleMcDougald0 -
URL rewrites
We have a problem whereby a number of our urls are adressable from different urls - I'm told because of a quirk of developing in .net. e.g. mysite/FundComparison mysite/Fund-comparison mysite/fund-comparison We asked our supplier who hosts this section of our site to do some url rewrites so that the duplicates would 301 to the correct url. They're on IIS 6.0 and are not ready to upgrade to IIS 7.0 (my recommendation, which makes it easier for them to do the rewrite using the rewrite module). They said it would take 6-8 weeks to implement a web controller to do this. "The bulk of the time for this implementation is in the build of the engine + the addition of all the possible permutations of the URL to redirect to the proper URL." This sounds absolutely insane to me. I would have thought it could be done in a matter of hours. What do people think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchPM0 -
Removing Canonical Links
We implemented rel=canonical as we decided to paginate our pages. We then ran some testing and on the whole pagination did not work out so we removed all on-page pagination. Now, internally when I click for example a link for Widgets I get the /widgets.php but searching through Google I get to /widgets.php?page=all . There are not redirects in place at the moment. The '?page=all' page has been rated 'A' by the SEOmoz tool under On Page Optimization reports and performs much better than the exact same page without the '?page=all' (the score dips to a 'D' grade) so need to tread carefully so we don't lose the link value. Can anyone advise us on the best way forward? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jannkuzel0 -
Dynamic URLs Appearing on Google Page 1\. Convert to Static URLs or not?
Hi, I have a client who uses dynamic URLs thoughout his site. For SEO purposes, I've advised him to convert dynamic URLs to static URLs whenever possible. However, the client has a few dynamic URLs that are appearing on Google Page 1 for strategically valuable keywords. For these URLs, is it still worth it to 301 them to static URLs? In this case, what are the potential benefits and/or pitfalls?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mindflash0 -
How to 301 redirect ASP.net URLS
I have a situation where a site that was ASP.net has been replaced with a WordPress site. I've performed a Open Site Explorer analysis and found that most of the old pages, ie www.i3bus.com/ProductCategorySummary.aspx?ProductCategoryId=63 are returning a HTTP Status = NO DATA ... when followed ends up at the 404 catch-all page. Can I code the standard 301 Redirects in the .htaccess file for these ASP URLs? If not, I'm open to suggestions.... Thanks Bill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marvo0