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.
Will I loose from SEO if I rename my urls to be more keyword friendly?
-
As a good practice of SEO is to have your keywords in the links. I am thinking of doing some optimization and change my urls to more effective keywords. I am using shopify and there is an option (a tick) that you can check while changing the url (ex. for a category, for a product, for a blog post). This will give a redirection to the old post to the new.
Is it good practice? Is it risky for losing SEO or it will help to rank higher because I will have better keywords in my links?
-
I will check those guides and see how I can work on optimizations. Thank you.
-
Hi Spiros
Below are two guides that may assist in your URL structure. It appears the site is not ranking for target keywords so a re-structure is maybe beneficial. It is an ideal practice to have the target customer query in the URL structure. Shopify though has limitations so may need to work within them.
https://www.hostgator.com/blog/best-url-structure-seo/
https://outdoorsrank.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
The next step will 301'ing the old page to the new page.
Hope that helps.
-
If my pages were ranking top 20 keywords I would use tools like MOZ! So no they are not ranking top 20 and I want to achieve this....
-
Spiros
The first rule of seo - is to do no harm. Sometimes when you optimise a site as per "best practice" - then you lose rankings. It is important to protect the keywords that matter that you already rank for.
So an initial step is an audit.
Perhaps I will reframe. - is the page you want to change the URL for ranking in the top 20 positions for the keyword you are targeting for?
Regards
-
Obviously, I want to change the URL in order to optimize for a better keyword and not fix broken links. So you are saying that it will hurt SEO? I am using moz tools because SEO in not 100% optimized for my site. So I don't think my pages are ranking well. And ranking well is related to the specific keyword you want to rank for a page. An "expert" from MOZ told me that it can take like 5-10 months to see results from SEO actions. Then this is not measurable...I can't fix something today "ex a URL" and wait 10 months! I will need a more specific answer!
-
HI
If it is not broken - you do not fix it. So the first question is, how is the site ranking today for the customer query/ies you are targetting? If you are ranking well, then likely do not touch urls.
Regards
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
-
CDN for SEO (or not)?
Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
URL Injection Hack - What to do with spammy URLs that keep appearing in Google's index?
A website was hacked (URL injection) but the malicious code has been cleaned up and removed from all pages. However, whenever we run a site:domain.com in Google, we keep finding more spammy URLs from the hack. They all lead to a 404 error page since the hack was cleaned up in the code. We have been using the Google WMT Remove URLs tool to have these spammy URLs removed from Google's index but new URLs keep appearing every day. We looked at the cache dates on these URLs and they are vary in dates but none are recent and most are from a month ago when the initial hack occurred. My question is...should we continue to check the index every day and keep submitting these URLs to be removed manually? Or since they all lead to a 404 page will Google eventually remove these spammy URLs from the index automatically? Thanks in advance Moz community for your feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd0 -
Attack of the dummy urls -- what to do?
It occurs to me that a malicious program could set up thousands of links to dummy pages on a website: www.mysite.com/dynamicpage/dummy123 www.mysite.com/dynamicpage/dummy456 etc.. How is this normally handled? Does a developer have to look at all the parameters to see if they are valid and if not, automatically create a 301 redirect or 404 not found? This requires a table lookup of acceptable url parameters for all new visitors. I was thinking that bad url names would be rare so it would be ok to just stop the program with a message, until I realized someone could intentionally set up links to non existent pages on a site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood1 -
Product or Shop in URL
What do you think is better for seo and for sale, I am using woo-ecommerce for health products website. websitename.com/product/keyword OR websitename.com/shop/keyword
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MasonBaker0 -
What is better for SEO keywords in folder or in filename - also dupe filename question
Hey folks, I've got a question regarding URL structure. What is best for SEO given that there will be millions of lawyer names and 4 pages per lawyer www.lawyerz.com/office-locations/dr-al-pacino www.lawyerz.com/phone-number/dr-al-pacino www.lawyerz.com/reviews/dr-al-pacino www.lawyerz.com/ratings/dr-al-pacino OR www.lawyerz.com/office-locations-dr-al-pacino www.lawyerz.com/phone-number-dr-al-pacino www.lawyerz.com/reviews-dr-al-pacino www.lawyerz.com/ratings-dr-al-pacino OR www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/phone-number www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/reviews www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/ratings Also, concerning duplicate file names: In the first example there are 4 duplicate file names with the lawyers name. (would this cause Google to not index some) In the second example there are all unique file names (would this look spammy to Google or the user) In the third example there are millions of duplicate file names (if 1 million lawyers then 1 million files called "office-locations" etc (could so many duplicate filenames cause ranking issues) Should the lawyers name (which is the main keyword target) appear in the filename or in the folder - which is better for SEO in your opinion? Thanks for your input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irvingw0 -
What should I cover in a SEO proposal ?
What should I cover in a SEO proposal? Is there any sample SEO Proposal template in SEOMoz?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kashyaplakkad1 -
How to Target Keyword Permutations
I have a client that wants to rank for a keyword phrase that has many permutations.. ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort", "Hill Country Resort Alaska", "Hill Country Alaska Resort" But I'm wondering if I should target these all on the same page or not. I'm assuming all of these permutations are actually valid searches because I did my keyword research for 'exact match' keywords and got results like this.. (let me know if I'm missing something here, or if this sounds right) [Alaska Hill Country Resort] - 230 Local Searches [Hill Country Resort Alaska] - 140 Local Searches [Hill Country Alaska Resort] - 30 Local Searches The phrase we're targeting is their main keyword phrase, so I've chosen their home-page as the page to rank for this phrase. My thought is to optimize for the most popular phrase (ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort"), and sprinkle in the other phrases throughout the copy. Next I would run a link-building campaign targeting the main phrase first.. then the next phrase, and so on, so that my anchor text is more heavily focused on the more popular terms, but I would also make sure to include the less popular terms. Do you think this is the best way to go about this? Do I really need to make individual pages for each of the permutations, or is it okay to target them all on one page since they are essentially the same keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Can MadCap Flare WebHelp be made SEO Friendly?
A team member is porting over documentation from a .org wiki that will be placed on the company's root domain. The problem with MadCap is that it uses frames as well as javascript navigation. Has anyone encountered this problem before? I'm unfamiliar with the software and the project is pretty far into the pipeline at this point (I'm new at the company as well). Any advice on work-arounds or alternatives would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AnthonyYoung1