Should I shorten my urls?
-
For my informational site I have a lot of urls that are way too long. When I first created the site, I wrote a script that takes out the common words of a post and fashions a url. So, for example, if the first few words of a question were:
Hi there, I have a question about back pain. I'm wondering what drugs would be good for relief and how I can get some help?
then my url may be:
www.mydomain.com/question?id=123-question-back-pain-wondering-drugs-good-relief-how-get-some-help
Once I got learning about seo I realized that these urls were too long but I never did anything about them. Should I be shortening these, or is my time best spent doing something else?
-
That is brilliant Marcus. The if-else idea regarding the ID makes so much sense. I will leave the old ones as is and change the ones from this point on.
Thanks!
p.s. I noticed that seomoz does the same thing with the Q&A urls. This one's not too long because I asked a short question but some of the question urls in here are quite long!
-
Hey
That's a solid point from EGOL - if there are ones that are working well at the moment, don't rock the boat and look to improve new content. The dynamic thing does make it a bit more tricky but really, it should not be a massive problem.
If your URLs are generated by the script and you have some kind of ID relating to the content you are adding it should be easy enough to put something in place that uses better quality URLs for new content.
If contentID > x Then
Build new URL Structure
Else
Build old URL Structure
End
Whether you do this entirely in the code or with some URL rewriting to add polish is up to you and in some part depends on how things work on your back end but...
Where there is a will there is a way and if you can shorten future URLs it will provide some benefit.
Maybe you could do some testing to see if it is going to be worth your while
- Create a few hard coded new pages over the next month
- Track them against the current pages
- see if there is a statistical improvement in clicks, conversions, impressions etc
I am pretty much of the opinion that if you can change them going forward, you should as they are not brilliant at the moment but I would not expect miracles from this though so don't bust a blood vessel over it.
Cheers
Marcus -
You could definitely redirect URLs using .htaccess and mod_rewrite. An example rule would be something like
RewriteRule ^q/(.*) /?question=$1
or
RewriteRule ^q/(.*)-(\d+) /?question=$2-$1
See the mod_rewrite documentation or just ask a competent developer about the rules above.
-
I definitely agree with the "messy" thing. Every few months I think, "Oh, I should fix that long url thingy", but then my brain gets shorted out trying to think of how to do it. I wanted to do a htaccess redirect but because the url is written with a php script I just can't figure out how to do it.
Invariably what happens is that I manage to get my mind onto other more exciting things and then I just do nothing and I end up having more and more ugly long urls.
-
ahh... this question is getting messy...
I don't know exactly how the rel-canonical tag will work in this situation.
-
Thanks guys. One of my problems is that all of these urls are generated dynamically. So, I'm thinking of changing the script on that page so that it generates a shorter url. Then, I think I can use the rel-canonical tag to tell Google that the short urls are the ones to use.
If I do that will the long ones drop out of the index?
-
If you can change future URLs without changing the historic URLs then I would leave the old ones "as is". (Meaning... change future but not old ones)
It will take work to change them and if you do a 301 then there might be some link power lost.
I always like to base my decisions at least in part on analytics, so if these pages are pulling nice traffic and ranking in the SERPs then I would not do a thing about the old ones.
Just an opinion.
-
Hey, they are too long and don't really make any sense so... I think they need improving.
In an ideal world your URL should describe the content of the page as it will help win clicks and may give you an SEO boost through links that use the URL itself as the anchor.
Shorten them though, should be easy enough and certainly gives a usability boost.
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
-
URL Parameters, Forms & SEO
Hi I have some pages on the site which have a quote form, in my site crawl I see these showing as duplicate content - my webmaster says this isn't the case, but I'm not sure. Landing page - https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/high-esd-chairs Page with form - https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/high-esd-chairs?quote-form - this also somehow has a canonical on it pointing to https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/high-esd-chairs?quote-form Which neither of us have added. I'm thinking we need to get the canonical needs to be updated to https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/high-esd-chairs Is it worth doing this for all these pages or am I worrying about nothing? Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
URL Migration: Better to have .301s processed or 200s?
I'm migrating sub-domains to sub-folders, but this question is likely applicable for most URL migrations. For example: subdomain1.example.com to example.com/subdomain1 and any child pages. Bear with me as it may just be me but I'm having trouble understanding whether internal links (menu, contextual etc and potentially the sitemaps) should be kept as the pre-migration URL (with .301 in place to the new URL) to give Google a chance to process the redirects or if they should be updated straight away to the new URL to provide a 200 response as so many guides suggest. The reason I ask is unless Google specifically visits the old URL from their index (and therefore processes the .301), it's likely to be found by following internal links on the website or similar which if they're updated to reflect the new URL will return a 200. I would imagine that this would be treated as a new page, which is concerning as it would have a canonical pointing toward itself and the same content as the pre-migrated URL. Is this a problem? Do we need to allow proper processing of redirects for migrations or is Google smarter than this and can work it out if they visit the old URL at a later date and put two and two together? What happens in-between? I haven't seen any migration guides suggest leaving .301s in place but to amend links to 200 as soon as possible in all instances. One thought is I guess there's also the Fetch as Google tool within Search Console which could be used with the old URLs - could this be relied on? Apologies if this topic has been covered before but it's quite difficult to search for without returning generic topics around .301 redirects. Hope it makes sense - appreciate any responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AmyCatlow0 -
How to change URL structure in google webmasters
Is there any way to ask google to indexed the website in following URL structure abc.com/category/postname (I have this structure on my website) But Currently google indexed my website posts as - abc.com/postname/category How I can tell google to follow the right structure?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard0 -
How to switch from URL based navigation to Ajax, 1000's of URLs gone
Hi everyone, We have thousands of urls generated by numerous products filters on our ecommerce site, eg./category1/category11/brand/color-red/size-xl+xxl/price-cheap/in-stock/. We are thinking of moving these filters to ajax in order to offer a better user experience and get rid of these useless urls. In your opinion, what is the best way to deal with this huge move ? leave the existing URLs respond as before : as they will disappear from our sitemap (they won't be linked anymore), I imagine robots will someday consider them as obsolete ? redirect permanent (301) to the closest existing url mark them as gone (4xx) I'd vote for option 2. Bots will suddenly see thousands of 301, but this is reflecting what is really happening, right ? Do you think this could result in some penalty ? Thank you very much for your help. Jeremy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JeremyICC0 -
301 forwarding old urls to new urls - when should you update sitemap?
Hello Mozzers, If you are amending your urls - 301ing to new URLs - when in the process should you update your sitemap to reflect the new urls? I have heard some suggest you should submit a new sitemap alongside old sitemap to support indexing of new URLs, but I've no idea whether that advice is valid or not. Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How long does google index old urls?
Hey guys, We are currently in the process of redesigning a site but in two phases as the timeline issues. So there will be up to a 4 week gap between the 1st and 2nd set of redirects. These urls will be idle 4 weeks before the phase content is ready. What effect if any will this have on the domain and page authority? Thanks Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daracreative0 -
Massive URL blockage by robots.txt
Hello people, In May there has been a dramatic increase in blocked URLs by robots.txt, even though we don't have so many URLs or crawl errors. You can view the attachment to see how it went up. The thing is the company hasn't touched the text file since 2012. What might be causing the problem? Can this result any penalties? Can indexation be lowered because of this? ?di=1113766463681
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moneywise_test0 -
What url should i link to?
Hi everybody, after some discussions i decided to keep my page on the old domain for better seo rankings; However, the new third level domain sounds better: poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it.... the question is: i'm going to recive a high value link and i don't know if i should link directly to the old adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) where the page is located or to the new one by making a 301 redirect to the previous. what's best? and second question what's the way to keep the page on this adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) but show poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it as url? thank you guido
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0