Worth Dropping www. from Domain Name to Shorten URL
-
The Moz page grader identified several pages where the only problem is the length of the URL, above 75 characters. The site uses uses the www. prefix, and has for years, since 2001. Is it worth dropping the www. and doing a redirect to https://domainname.com to gain the 4 characters
-
Thanks for the advice
-
Thanks for the advice
-
Absolutely do NOT change from the www just for the sake of saving four characters in the URL. It would mean that every single page on your site would now have to go through a 301-redirect.
You should only change URLs when absolutely necessary, and the reasoning for this change certainly doesn't qualify!
Also worth noting - a www URL has more technical flexibility. Those reasons may not apply to you now but could in the future.
Paul
-
Hi FatRodent2013,
There is nothing to worry about URL length. It was said by John Mueller that: SHORTER URLs AREN'T GIVEN PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT IN SEARCH - Deepcrawl Webmasters Hangouts notes 07/13/18.
Stick with what you've already got. It might be worthy to spend more time focusing on content and giving users coming from google better experience.Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Ranking dropped after change single page url, should I change it back?
I was making updates to the content on the following page, and a few days later dropped from #2 SERP ranking to 50+. Things I checked: Yes, 301 redirect was implemented right away. After publishing, I manually requested indexing in search console. Right after publishing I re-submitted the sitemap manually and Google said they had not crawled it in 9 days. My question: should I change the URL back to the old one, or give it a little more time (especially since I re-submitted sitemap) Original URL: https://www.travelinsurancereview.net/plans/travel-medical/ New URL: https://www.travelinsurancereview.net/plans/travel-medical-insurance/
On-Page Optimization | | DamianTysdal0 -
URL for a new website
Hi, I am creating a new website for a client. Is it best to include the keywords from the most common search in the domain name, they would like: forenamesurname.com but should I be recommending: weddingmakeupbyforename.com Does it make much difference to search rankings if the keyword is in the domain name? Thanks v much
On-Page Optimization | | danieldunn100 -
80% Drop in Organic Traffic
Hi I have a small private blog on wine which, on Monday of this last week, took an overnight tumble and lost all its first page rankings for wine terms. The blog used to be housed at blogspot but in October I moved to self hosted wordpress. The original site was: wine90.blogspot.com and this now has a redirect to wine90.com. I paid for a professional to port the site from blogger to wordpress and to set up a 301 redirect. Firstly, is there anything wrong with the move? Could I have lost my rankings for this reason? Secondly, I haven't added a new blog post in nearly 3 months, would this cause such a drop? Thirdly, I have noticed that the hosting (I host with the same man who ported the site from blogger) has been poor and the website has been down a couple of times on the rare occasions I checked it recently. I'm looking for some help, although this is not a money making site, its only a hobby that I add to when I have time, but it is a shame to have written 200 articles and now to face this slap from Google. There are no messages in WMT and I do not actively seek links so nothing dodgy there. Any ideas? When I asked the guy who is hosting it he told me that this week there has been a big SEO update but I haven't heard of it?
On-Page Optimization | | xoffie0 -
Is .PW domain is good for SEO?
I want to register .PW domain which has recently got live to register. I am in doubt should it is good for SEO or not.
On-Page Optimization | | semmediapvtltd0 -
Should I rewrite all my URLs ?
Hi all, I'm pretty new here and this is a question I'm struggling with since years ! All my URLs are very long. Years ago I wanted to put as many keywords as possible but today I'm not sure anymore it was such a good idea. Example: http://www.spirit-of-metal.com/album-groupe-Take_Me_To_Janus-nom_album-Ripping_the_Heart_from_the_Chest_of_the_Earth-l-en.html The problem is I have more than 300K of these pages. I'm afraid to create a huge mess even if I 301 them all to the new pages. What's your opinion ? Is it worth the effort ? Many thanks in advance for your precious help !
On-Page Optimization | | kivanSOM0 -
Page authority 1 for new URLs
Hi There Quite a beginner question. I have changed url structure last week and is already avaliable on google.What i find strange is that the PA reported by SEOMOZ is 1 and there's no google cache. If the page has to crawled yet, why it's avaliable on google index already? Dario
On-Page Optimization | | Mrlocicero0 -
Trailing slash on URLs
Hi everyone My question is regarding trailing URLs in Wordpress A designer setup a site and made the URL structure something like: www.website.com/description/ but I want to change it to www.website.com/description as this is more SEF A trailing / was added to the permalink structure in Wordpress, if I change this will google see these as new URLs and will all the current URLs become 404? Or should I just leave it? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | webseoservices0 -
SEO Domain Values
I always thought that there was no difference in value between a .com and .net, also that hyphens have the same value as the keyphrase without the hyphen. But I have heard Rand lately saying hyphens are spammy - whats the go? Is CarParts.com better than Car-Parts.com or Car-Parts.net etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Ventura0