How careful do you need to be about changes to readable URLs?
-
We are moving to Sitecore where the standard out the box is that if you change page title it amends the URL as well.
I am worried that this will lead to SEO issues and am considering whether we need to get it locked down so that if the page title is amended (only in a minor way) it does not also change the URL.
I have never worked with readable URLs before - what are the implications of the URL not exactly matching the wording of the page title?
-
I use Sitecore and it doesn't change the URL if the title is changed. In my case, you first enter the name of the item, which becomes the URL, and then you go on to add the title and content and so forth. (But this may have been an add-on--I wasn't here when it was set up.)
If yours changes the URL if you change the title, I'd definitely get that fixed. You don't want a nice outside link to get broken because someone decides to tweak a title and changes the URL!
In Sitecore you can easily add aliases however, in case your URL gets changed and you want the old one to still be available (just be sure to add the appropriate canonical--that is a custom field you'd have to have added, or at least it was in my case).
There is also a "rename" option you can use to change the URL to whatever you want, again just be sure there weren't any good links to the old URL or if there were, use alias and canonical as above.
And as others have said, the title and URL do not need to match exactly, but they should be closely related.
-
"you don't want to go changing your page titles frequently"
Very good thought too Andy!
-
You don't need to worry about the page title and URL matching exactly. Google doesn't give any inherent SEO boost to sites that have URL's and titles that match.
That said, there are most certainly benefits to having a good URL structure. It will help with usability and can help with click through rates, which in a roundabout way, can impact your positions.
An an example, if you look at the following, what do they say to you?
- ../armani/emporioarmani/suits <-- This tells me all I need to know about the page I am on
- ../product/cat63/23487HA.html <-- This tells me absolutely nothing useful
"...am considering whether we need to get it locked down so that if the page title is amended (only in a minor way) it does not also change the URL."
This would be fine to do. However, you don't want to go changing your page titles frequently. Pick a format that you are happy with and try to stick with it. Only change this if something significant on the page also changes that would call for rewording.
-Andy
-
Hi,
If you're changing the Page Title to represent an accurate keyword for that page (or what that page is about), then I would suggest actually changing the URL (or in this case allowing the URL) to represent that targeted keyword.
For example, I have a page about an alzheimer's game for people diagnosed with alzheimer's. My page title will be "Fun Alzheimer's Game for Loving Family Members with Alzheimer's." My URL may be "fun-alzheimers-game-for-family-members. (something along those lines - I am creating something here that may not be accurate of course).
So you would want your URL and Title Tag to be not necessarily be exactly the same (although plenty of mine are) but very, very similar to tell search engines what this page is about.
Keep in mind that if you do change the URL (from changing the Title Tag), to do a 301 redirect. That is to tell search engines that the old URL now is this new URL.
I hope this helps.
Cole
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
-
Content change and variations in ranking
Hello, I have create a new webpage and asked google in the webmaster tool to crawl it. Within minutes it is ranked at a certain spot. I did make changes to it to increase the ranking and right away I could see variations in ranking either up or down ? I have done the same same thing for a page that has been existing on my website for many years. I changed the content, asked the webmaster tool to re-crawl it. It got the new content within minutes but the ranking doesn't seem to change. Maybe my content isn't good enough but I doubt. Could it be that on old pages it takes a couple weeks to see ranking changes whereas on new page it is instantaneous. Has anyone experienced something similar ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Keyword in URL - SEO impact
Hi, We don't have most important keyword of our industry in our domain or sub-domain. How important it is to have keyword in website URL? Most of our competitors pages with "keyword" urls been listing in SERP. What is back-links role in this scenarion? And which URL have more advantage? keyword in sub-domain or page with keyword. Like for "seo" keyword..... seo.example.com or example.com/seo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
When the site's entire URL structure changed, should we update the inbound links built pointing to the old URLs?
We're changing our website's URL structures, this means all our site URLs will be changed. After this is done, do we need to update the old inbound external links to point to the new URLs? Yes the old URLs will be 301 redirected to the new URLs too. Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jade1 -
Link juice through URL parameters
Hi guys, hope you had a fantastic bank holiday weekend. Quick question re URL parameters, I understand that links which pass through an affiliate URL parameter aren't taken into consideration when passing link juice through one site to another. However, when a link contains a tracking URL parameter (let's say gclid=), does link juice get passed through? We have a number of external links pointing to our main site, however, they are linking directly to a unique tracking parameter. I'm just curious to know about this. Thanks, Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Need suggestion for URL structure to show my website in Google News section
I need suggestion for URL structure to include my news section in Google News.Google recommend any specific URL structure to include website in Google News.?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
WordPress Duplicate URLs?
On my site, there are two different category bases leading to the exact same page. My developer claims that this is a common — and natural — occurrence when using WordPress, and that there's not a duplicate content issue to worry about. Is this true? Here's an example of the correct url. and... Here's an example of the same exact content, but using a different url. Notice that one is coming from /topics and the other is coming from /authors base. My understanding is that this is bad. Am I wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JasonMOZ1 -
"Category" word in URLs of blog is it SEO Friendly URL ??
Hello respected community members, I saw many times that "Category" word comes in URL of blog. So my que is that is this negative for SEO or Positive. & if we don't wanna to come CATEGORY in URL how can we remove while URL Optimization ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sourabhrana390 -
Spaces in URL line
Hi Gurus, I recently made the mistake of putting a space into a URL line between two words that make up my primary key word. Think www.example.com/Jelly Donuts/mmmNice.php instead of www.example.com/JellyDonuts/mmmNice.php This mistake now needed fixing to www.example.com/Jelly Donuts/mmmNice.php to pass W3, but has been in place for a while but most articles/documents under 'Jelly Donuts' are not ranking well (which is probably the obvious outcome of the mistake). I am wondering whether the best solution from an SEO ranking viewpoint is to: 1. Change the article directory immediately to www.example.com/JellyDonuts/mmmNice.php and rel=canonical each article to the new correct URL. Take out the 'trash' using robots.txt or to 301 www.example.com/Jelly Donut to the www.example.com/JellyDonut directory? or perhaps something else? Thanks in advance for your help with this sticky (but tasty) conundrum, Brad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BM70