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.
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
-
Sitemap generator which only includes canonical urls
Does anyone know of a 3rd party sitemap generator that will only include the canonical url's? Creating a sitemap with geo and sorting based parameters isn't the most ideal way to generate sitemaps. Please let me know if anyone has any ideas. Mind you we have hundreds of thousands of indexed url's and this can't be done with a simple text editor.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | recbrands0 -
Spammy Inbound Links
Hello, We have been using Zendesk to manage our customer support tickets for approx 2 years. We recently noticed that the attached forum had lot's of spam comments attached to it. Promoting Viagra and the like. The system was installed as a subdomain of my site support.mysite.com We have since deleted our account with Zendesk but Moz and Google are reporting loads of inbound links to that subdomain that are all total spam with Viagra in the anchor text etc. The subdomain no longer exists and now throws a 404. Can these links still hurt me? Is there other steps I need to take? I have disavowed all the links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | niallfred0 -
301 redirect to a temporary URL
Hi there, What would happen if I redirected a set of URLs to a temporary URL structure. And then a few weeks later redirected the original URLs and temporary URLs to the final permanent URLs? So for example:A -> B for a few weeks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sichristie
then: A->C and B->C where:
C is the final destination URL.
B is the temporary destination
A is the original URL. The reason we are doing this is the naming of the URLs and pages are different, and we wish to transition our customers carefully from old to new. I am looking for a pure technical response.
Would we lose link juice? Does Google care if we permanently redirect to a set of 'temporary' URLs, and then permanently redirect to a set of what we think are permanent URLs? Cheers, Simon0 -
URL tracking on offline material
Hi there, Hope someone can give some advice. We are doing some magazine advertising, the main purpose of the advert is to promote one of our new products, however the URL goes something like this: http://www.domain.com/products/new-product-libra-furniture/ which is just too long for anyone to remember, I think it should be simply domain.com/libra which redirects to the product page, however how can I track this in Google Analytics? if using a 301 that's impossible? Any advice would be grateful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Is there a tool that lists all external followed URLs?
Is there a tool that lists all external followed URLs? Or maybe separates nofollowed and followed external URLs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MangoMan160 -
Best Product URL For Indexing
My proposed URL: mydomain.com/products/category/subcategory/product detail Puts my products 4 levels deep. Is this too deep to get my products indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Rel=Canonical URLs?
If I had two pages: PageA about Cats PageB about Dogs If PageA had a link rel=canonical to PageB, but the content is different, how would Google resolve this and what would users see if they searched "Cats" or "Dogs?" If PageA 301 redirected to PageB, (no content in PageA since it's 301 redirected), how would Google resolve this and what would users see if they searched "Cats" or "Dogs?"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | visionnexus0 -
URL Length or Exact Breadcrumb Navigation URL? What's More Important
Basically my question is as follows, what's better: www.romancingdiamonds.com/gemstone-rings/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (this would fully match the breadcrumbs). or www.romancingdiamonds.com/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (cutting out the first level folder to keep the url shorter and the important keywords are closer to the root domain). In this question http://www.seomoz.org/qa/discuss/37982/url-length-vs-url-keywords I was consulted to drop a folder in my url because it may be to long. That's why I'm hesitant to keep the bradcrumb structure the same. To the best of your knowldege do you think it's best to drop a folder in the URL to keep it shorter and sweeter, or to have a longer URL and have it match the breadcrumb structure? Please advise, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Romancing0