All Caps in URL
-
Hello, we're working with a corporate client to make changes to their URL structure. We recommended that they use a structure like "domain.com/state/city/location". Their IT department is on board, but they just mentioned that all of the state and city info will be pulled from a database where it is all caps.
So it would be like this "domain.com/STATE/CITY/location"
I'm concerned that it may be spammy, but I can't find any definitive information online. We usually like to test issues like this on our own sites before advising clients, but we're working up against a quick deadline.
Any help with this issue would be great, especially real world experience, not just theories. Thank you.
-
Thanks for the quick replies guys!
-
Its no Spammy, but in the long term, people will link to you using the lowercase URLs and u may risk a duplicate content issue.
If you have full access to Apache configuration,
RewriteEngine On RewriteMap lc int:tolower RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [A-Z] RewriteRule (.*) ${lc:$1} [R=301,L]
(you need to define RewriteMap in HTTPD config so you can call it out from htaccess)
-
Thanks Damien, that's a good technical solution. Unfortunately, we don't control the site and in order to recommend a technical change, I would need some rationale as to why an upper case URL is not good from an SEO standpoint (I can think of a few non-seo reasons they should not do this). Any ideas on that?
-
You can use a rewrite rule to change all the upper case letters to lower case. This should solve your problem before they are indexed and will do away with the need to 301 every upper case URL to a lower case one.
DD
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
-
Weird 404 Error URL's - Where to redirect?
For some reason, I end up with a bunch of weird 404 error URLs like these. /KRVWZ/SVfSZ/ /wp-content/upl /MKWTZ/RKYQZ/ /wp-content/upload What should I do with them? Should I redirect them or is there a better way to do something with them. I do use Yoast Premium if that makes a difference. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | photoseo10 -
Hi - How do you get rid of duplicate content that was accidentally created on a tag url? For example, when I published a new article, the content was duplicated on: /posts/tag/lead-generation/
the original article was created with: /posts/shippers-looking-for-freight-brokers/ How can I fix this so a new URL is not created every time I add a tag to a new posting?
On-Page Optimization | | treetopgrowthstrategy0 -
Can't get my preferred URL, how much does it matter?
Hi guys. I'm building a new site at the moment - seen a solid SEO opportunity for my work. I'm a producer engineer, specialising in mixing and mastering, so i'm creating a site for online mixing services. After a bit of keyword research I decided that "online mixing" was the best, most relevant and high volume term to go for. Ideally i'd like my home page to be www.onlinemixing.com (or something similar) but alas! It's been taken, as well as all the variations (like switching words, hypens etc) How much does this matter form an SEO point of view? E.g - For the search term "online mixing" would - www.onlinemixing-signalchain.co.uk be much worse than -www.onlinemixing.co.uk? Or am I sweating the small stuff? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Isaac.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Indexed/Submitted URLS vs Total Indexed
Hello, My site is www.colbysphotography.com. I have Total Indexed 195 while I have 87 URLs submitted and only 79 URLs Indexed. What is the difference and is there a problem? Thanks ahead of time,
On-Page Optimization | | littlecolby
Colby0 -
Image URL's have knocked my sub-pages down (WP)
I had most of my keywords within the top 10 for this site, some were even ranking in the top 5. For a possible minor boost, more-so to cover all the bases, I decided to add images to all of the pages, and they were uploaded as a gallery with most of the image file names being the same as the keyword. Thus, url's were created with our targeted phrases, extending off of the corresponding sub-page. After that, Google quickly picked up the url's to the images and began indexing them, when that occurred the sub-page which was to be the landing page, quickly tanked. Nothing else on-site changed besides the uploading of the images, so I'm sure they're conflicting and for whatever reason Google can't decide which page to index. The page that contains the images used, or the actual intended landing page. With WP I didn't see a way to not have them link to anything at all, and just be static when using a gallery, stock at least. So, my question is how can I quickly alleviate this problem and what should I do in the future to avoid this? I believe if I change link thumbnails to image file instead of attachment page, that should fix the issue... Then, I'll have dead URL's which I suppose I should 301 to the sub-page. Alternatively, is there a better solution that will work, I was also thinking about no-indexing the attachment URL's, but that doesn't seem to be an option.
On-Page Optimization | | JayAdams320 -
Adding keywords to URL's
I understand the importance of having the keyword in the URL (at least now I do). When I created my site (www.enchantingquotes.com), I was completely ignorant about SEO. So....question is...how do I go about adding keywords to already done pages? Do I create a new section and then redirect - or do I have to basically recreate pages? Thx much 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | enchantedgirlz0 -
URL structure for a new WordPress site
Hi I'm building a new next big thing website from scratch (for a translation agency) and I encountered an issue with the URL structure. I need to chose the URL for important targeted keyword pages and I have a conflict between two tools I'm using. Please read below the situation: domain: mashtranslation.com target keyword: french translation services which URL you think is better from a SEO point of view (and possibly for users): mashtranslation.com/services/french/ OR mashtranslation.com/french-translation-services/ I'm asking this because one WordPress plugin (Wordpress SEO by Yoast) says the URL structure is not optimised while another tool (Market Samurai) says the URL is optimised.
On-Page Optimization | | flo20 -
How do you see a list of URLs with duplicate page titles?
When looking at the Duplicate Page Title report, the Other URLs column has various numbers that presumably indicate the number of pages that share the same title. When I click on one of these numbers, say a URL that shows 4 in that column, the next page reports "No sample duplicate URLs to report". Why isn't it showing me the other 3 URLs with the same page title?
On-Page Optimization | | jkenyon0