Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Will I loose from SEO if I rename my urls to be more keyword friendly?

    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?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    7
    1342
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Spiros.im
      Spiros.im last edited by

      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?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Spiros.im
        Spiros.im last edited by

        I will check those guides and see how I can work on optimizations. Thank you.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • ClaytonJ
          ClaytonJ last edited by

          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://moz.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.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Spiros.im
            Spiros.im last edited by

            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....

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • ClaytonJ
              ClaytonJ last edited by

              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

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Spiros.im
                Spiros.im last edited by

                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!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • ClaytonJ
                  ClaytonJ last edited by

                  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

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • lcourse

                    Replacing keywords by synonyms. Will it increase risk of google keyword stuffing penalization?

                    I have a page which is ranking already pretty well for a relative competitive keyword. 
                    Google also ranks us on first page for synonym of keyword we optimize the page for (even though synonym does not appear on our page). I am now considering to replace some occurences of the keyword in the page by different synonyms, in the hope that our ranking may further improve for these synonyms. 
                    However I am concerned that google may penalize me for keyword stuffing if I am using a wide range of synonyms of one keyword on our page. My plan is only to replace some occurences of keyword with synonyms. I am a bit nerveous here since page is already ranking quite well in a competitive niche. Any thoughts?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
                    0
                  • CFCU

                    Having 2 brands with the same content - will this work from an SEO perspective

                    Hi All, I would love if someone could help and provide some insights on this.  We're a financial institution and have a set of products that we offer. We have recently joined with another brand and will now be offering all our products to their customers. What we are looking to do is have 1 site that masks the content for both sites so it appears as there are 2 seperate brands with different content - in fact we have a main site and then a sister brand that offers the same products. Is there anyway to do this so when someone searches for Credit Card from Brand A it is indexed under Brand A and same when someone searched for Credit Card from Brand B it is indexed under Brand B. The one thing is we would not want to rel:can the pages nor be penalised by googles latest PR algorithm. Hope someone can help! Thanks Dave

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFCU
                    1
                  • Sundance_Kidd

                    How does Infinite Scrolling work with unique URLS as users scroll down? And is this SEO friendly?

                    I was on a site today and as i scrolled down and viewed the other posts that were below the top one i read, i noticed that each post below the top one had its own unique URL. I have not seen this and was curious if this method of infinite scrolling is SEO friendly. Will Google's spiders scroll down and index these posts below the top one and index them? The URLs of these lower posts by the way were the same URLs that would be seen if i clicked on each of these posts. Looking at Google's preferred method for Infinite scrolling they recommend something different - https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/02/infinite-scroll-search-friendly.html . Welcome all insight. Thanks! Christian

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sundance_Kidd
                    0
                  • vivekrathore

                    "Null" appearing as top keyword in "Content Keywords" under Google index in Google Search Console

                    Hi, "Null" is appearing as top keyword in Google search console > Google Index > Content Keywords for our site http://goo.gl/cKaQ4K . We do not use "null" as keyword on site. We are not able to find why Google is treating "null" as a keyword for our site. Is anyone facing such issue. Thanks & Regards

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore
                    0
                  • Kingalan1

                    What Constitutes Keyword Stuffing?

                    Greeting MOZ Community: I have been attempting to add certain keywords phrases to the home page text of our real estate web site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com). When I check the keyword density and look at the keyword cloud, the frequency of certain terms appear substantially higher than they should be (see attached keyword cloud and keyword density chart.  Certain terms like "office space" have a 5 or 6% frequency which seems high. Last thing we need is a Panda penalty. When I viewed the code for the home page (see enclosed), I noticed HREF tags, SRE tags and ALT tags repeating certain keyword phrases, driving up their density. I have attached a keyword cloud for the home page of a competitor and the use of language seems more diverse. Does Google take the text in these various tags into account? I know the ALT tag is important for SEO, but how about the others? Does the use of text in the tags for this page make the overall page look spammy? Also, there are text and tags for the carousel in the home page that appear in the code for the home page. If this code were somehow concealed, would we be better off from an SEO perspective? Thanks, Alan pkM7CZG 1DFFMZ0

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
                    0
                  • 379seo

                    Canonical URLs and Sitemaps

                    We are using canonical link tags for product pages in a scenario where the URLs on the site contain category names, and the canonical URL points to a URL which does not contain the category names.  So, the product page on the site is like www.example.com/clothes/skirts/skater-skirt-12345, and also like www.example.com/sale/clearance/skater-skirt-12345 in another category.  And on both of these pages, the canonical link tag references a 3rd URL like www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345.  This 3rd URL, used in the canonical link tag is a valid page, and displays the same content as the other two versions, but there are no actual links to this generic version anywhere on the site (nor external). Questions: 1. Does the generic URL referenced in the canonical link also need to be included as on-page links somewhere in the crawled navigation of the site, or is it okay to be just a valid URL not linked anywhere except for the canonical tags? 2. In our sitemap, is it okay to reference the non-canonical URLs, or does the sitemap have to reference only the canonical URL?  In our case, the sitemap points to yet a 3rd variation of the URL, like www.example.com/product.jsp?productID=12345.  This page retrieves the same content as the others, and includes a canonical link tag back to www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345.  Is this a valid approach, or should we revise the sitemap to point to either the category-specific links or the canonical links?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 379seo
                    0
                  • AnthonyYoung

                    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 | | AnthonyYoung
                    1
                  • AndreVanKets

                    Is it safe to redirect multiple URLs to a single URL?

                    Hi, I have an old Wordress website with about 300-400 original pages of content on it. All relating to my company's industry: travel in Africa. It's a legitimate site with travel stories, photos, advice etc. Nothing spammy about. No adverts on it. No affiliates. The site hasn't been updated for a couple of years and we no longer have a need for it. Many of the stories on it are quite out of date. The site has built up a modest Mozrank value over the last 5 years, and has a few hundreds organically achieved inbound links. Recently I set up a swanky new branded website on ExpressionEngine on a new domain. My intention is to: Shut down the old site Focus all attention on building up content on the new website Ask the people linking to the old site to my new site instead (I wonder how many will actually do so...) Where possible, setup a 301 redirect from pages on the old site to their closest match on the new site Setup a 301 redirect from the old site's home page to new site's homepage Sounds good, right? But there is one issue I need some advice on... The old site has about 100 pages that do not have a good match on the new site. These pages are outdated or inferior quality, so it doesn't really make sense to rewrite them and put them on the new site. I call these my "black sheep pages". So... for these "black sheep pages" should I (A) redirect the urls to the new site's homepage (B) redirect the urls the old site's home page (which in turn, redirects to the new site's homepage, or (C) not redirect the urls, and let them die a lonely 404 death? OPTION A: oldsite.com/page1.php -> newsite.com
                    oldsite.com/page2.php -> newsite.com
                    oldsite.com/page3.php -> newsite.com
                    oldsite.com/page4.php -> newsite.com
                    oldsite.com/page5.php -> newsite.com
                    oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION B: oldsite.com/page1.php -> oldsite.com
                    oldsite.com/page2.php -> oldsite.com
                    oldsite.com/page3.php -> oldsite.com
                    oldsite.com/page4.php -> oldsite.com
                    oldsite.com/page5.php -> oldsite.com
                    oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION 😄 oldsite.com/page1.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                    oldsite.com/page2.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                    oldsite.com/page3.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                    oldsite.com/page4.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                    oldsite.com/page5.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                    oldsite.com -> newsite.com My intuition tells me that Option A would pass the most "link juice" to my new site, but I am concerned that it could also be seen by Google as a spammy redirect technique. What would you do? Help 😐

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndreVanKets
                    1

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.