Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How important are clean URLs?
-
Just wanting to understand the importance of clean URLs in regards to SEO effectiveness.
Currently, we have URLs for a site that reads as follows: http://www.interhampers.com.au/c/90/Corporate Gift Hampers
Should we look into modifying this so that the URL does not have % or figures?
-
What if you have a client with a LOT of ugly URLs that need to be cleaned up?
The plan is to create 301 redirects for every page that we change. But, let's say we're talking about 50+ product pages.
In your opinion, is it a problem to make that many changes at once?
Would you paste them out?
If so, how many at a time?
Also, is it a problem to have that many 301's on your website?Thank you!
-
Yes! As Suresh and Shakur said, that it is preferred by people and search engines. People have hard time reading the urls with special characters and a hyphen is recommended.
Regards
-
Hi there!
Clean URLs are preferred by people, and it just so happens that search engines prefer them as well. Keywords in URLs are, more often than not, used to identify the relevance of a page when a search for a particular keyword is performed. However, it is not generally recommended to stuff keywords in your URLs for SEO purposes. The idea is to deliver enhanced usability to help users remember and share your URLs more easily. At the same time, clean URLs also facilitate a search engine’s ability to identify the relevance of page content to a particular search query, in order to choose what to display in search results.
So yes, it´s better if you modify all of them and make it clean.
Good luck
-
Definitely you should look into modifying the url structure. % represents blank spaces in the url. You can replace the blank spaces with "-". Google recommends hyphenated url's rather than blank spaces and underscores. The url's should be clean with every word seperated by "-" and the url size can be anywhere around 80 to 90 characters in length.
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 shows up in "Inurl' but not when using time parameters
Hey everybody, I have been testing the Inurl: feature of Google to try and gauge how long ago Google indexed our page. SO, this brings my question. If we run inurl:https://mysite.com all of our domains show up. If we run inurl:https://mysite.com/specialpage the domain shows up as being indexed If I use the "&as_qdr=y15" string to the URL, https://mysite.com/specialpage does not show up. Does anybody have any experience with this? Also on the same note when I look at how many pages Google has indexed it is about half of the pages we see on our backend/sitemap. Any thoughts would be appreciated. TY!
On-Page Optimization | | HashtagHustler1 -
Is the URL Matching the Page Title Important?
Hello I have tried searching for an answer on this but I can't get a clear answer due to the results when searching for URL title. I have just launched our second Shopify site for one of our brands. My first site launched in 2014 but when I launched I didn't pay much heed to SEO for page titles, URLs, etc so have retrospectively fixed this over time. For my Shopify site just launching I want to get it as right as possible from the start (learning from mistakes). My question is regarding URLs and what my approach should be for better SEO. So, I have a page with a Title of Newton Leather Wallets, Purses, Card Holders & Glasses Cases and the URL is https://www.tumbleandhide.com/collections/newton-leather-wallets-card-holders It was my understanding that I should try and make the URL reflect the Page Title more accurately. The problem is that this takes the character count to 77. On other pages it can be in the 80s. Will the above link be better for SEO than say just https://www.tumbleandhide.com/collections/newton I am just wary of the URL's being too long as my Moz Site Crawl is returning a lot of URLs that are too long. Thanks in Advance.
On-Page Optimization | | lukegj0 -
Should I optimize my home-page or a sub-page for my most important keyword
Quick question: When choosing the most important keyword set that I would like to rank for, would I be better off optimizing my homepage, or a sub page for this keyword. My thinking goes as follows: The homepage (IE www.mysite.com) naturally has more backlinks and thus a better Google Page Rank. However, there are certain things I could do to a subpage (IE www.mysite.com/green-widgets-los-angeles ) that I wouldn't want to do to the homepage, which might be more "optimal" overall. Option C, I suppose, would be to optimize both the homepage, and a single sub-page, which is seeming like a pretty good solution, but I have been told that having multiple pages optimized for the same keywords might "confuse" search engines. Would love any insight on this!
On-Page Optimization | | Jacob_A2 -
Ecommerce URLs with numbers
Hi everybody! I have to optimize an ecommerce where somebody has previously done the SEO optimization, although the URLs have numbers before the product's name They have told me that these numbers are useful to find the products, so I think it shouldn't be really bad if I don't redirect them to "clear" ones. For example: /colesterol-sobrepeso/2217-hc-grass-capsulas-duras-15-capsulas.html > /colesterol-sobrepeso/hc-grass-capsulas-duras-15-capsulas.html Am I right? After all, they contain the keywords and the subfolders are also ok. Or it would be better if I redirect the whole site? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Estherpuntu0 -
How to remove subdomains in a clean way?
Hello, I have a main domain example.com where I have my main content and then I created 3 subdomains one.example.com, two.example.com and three.example.com I think the low ranking of my subdomains is affecting the ranking of my main domain, the one I care the most. So, I decided to get rid of the subdomains. The thing is that only for one.example.com I could transfer the content to my main domain and create 301 redirects. For the other two subdomains I cannot integrate the content in my main domain as it doesn't make sense. Whats the cleanest way to make them dissapear? (just put a redirect to my main domain even if the content is not the same) or just change the robots to "noindex" and put a 404 page in the index of each subdomain. I want to use the way that will harm the least the performance with Google. Regards!
On-Page Optimization | | Gaolga0 -
URL Path. What is better for SEO
Hello Moz people, Is it better for SEO to have a URL path like this: flowersite.com/anniversary_flowers/dozen_roses OR flowersite.com/dozen_roses Is it better to have the full trail of pages in the URL?
On-Page Optimization | | CKerr0 -
How do I remove a Canonical URL Tag?
Some of my report cards say I have too many canonical URL tags. However, there is no information no how to delete one. Can someone give me a link or explain? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger0 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0