Slug best practices?
-
Hello, my team is trying to understand how to best construct slugs. We understand they need to be concise and easily understandable, but there seem to be vast differences between the three examples below.
Are there reasons why one might be better than the others?
http://hollywoodlife.com/2014/06/20/jeremy-meeks-sexy-mug-shot-felon-viral/
-
I don't see that much differences in the URL structure of Hollywood Life and TMZ, their editors just chose the short or shorter variant for their news story (in most cases they don't have to worry about SEO). The Washington post is a pity as they have to add a couple of extra directories in their URL structure.
-
That's a very subjective question, so I'll just list some references that you may want to review: Google's SEO guide (see pages 8-9 for URLs), Ann Smarty's post at SEJ, Moz's guide to URL best practices, and an old Moz post by Rand Fishkin on good URLs. I hope this helps!
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
-
Keyword Research: How best to target keywords without using a region as part of the search query.
When doing keyword research and trying to rank for a keyword. I am wondering if we need to localize the query by adding a city to it. For example Phoenix Web Design vs. just targeting web design since Google is localizing search results now. Then when creating content and optimizing the site do we just put the keyword in the title and page content or do we also add the region/city to the keyword phrase? Any insight would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hireawizseo0 -
What is the best URL structure for categories?
A client's site currently uses the URL structure: www.website.com/�tegory%/%postname% Which I think is optimised fairly well, as the categories are keywords being targeted. However, as they are using a category hierarchy, often times the URL looks like this: www.website.com/parent-category/child-category/some-post-titles-are-quite-long-as-they-are-long-tail-terms Best practise often dictates (such as point 3 in this Moz article) that shorter URLs are better for several reasons. So I'm left with a few options: Remove the category from the URL Flatten the category hierarchy Shorten post titles two a word or two - which would hurt my long tail search term traffic. Leave it as it is What do we think is the best route to take? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | underscorelive0 -
Best practice to avoid cannibalization of internal pages
Hi everyone, I need help from the best SEO guys regarding a common issue : the cannibalization of internal pages between each other. Here is the case : Let's say I run the website CasualGames.com. This website provides free games, as well as articles and general presentation about given categories of Casual Games. For instance, for the category "Sudoku Games", the structure will be : Home page of the game : http://www.casualgames.com/sudoku/ Free sudoku game listings : (around 100 games listed) http://www.casualgames.com/sudoku/free/ A particular sudoku game : http://www.casualgames.com/sudoku/free/game-1/ A news regarding sudoku games : http://www.casualgames.com/sudoku/news/title The problem is that these pages seem to "cannibalize" each other. Explanation : In the SERPS, for the keyword "Casual Games", the home page doesn't appear well ranked and some specific sudoku games page (one of the 100 games) are better ranked although they are "sub-pages" of the category.. Same for the news pages : a few are better ranked than the category page.. I am kind of lost.. Any idea what would be the best practice in this situation? THANKS a LOT.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | laboiteac
Guillaume0 -
Best way to get the keyword ranking at the top
I am working on site for around six months now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ray2810
I have done social bookmarking submission, directory submission, blog comments, forum submissions etc. Is there anything else i can do to make the rank go higher. nothing is working correctly.0 -
How To Best Close An eCommerce Site?
We're closing down one of our eCommerce sites. What is the best approach to do this? The site has a modest link profile (a young site). It does have a run of site link to the parent site. It also has a couple hundred email subscribers and established accounts. Is there a gradual way to do this? How do I treat the subscribers and account holders? The impact won't be great, but I want to minimize collateral damage as much as possible. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Best way to consolidate link juice
I've got a conundrum I would appreciate your thoughts on. I have a main container page listing a group of products, linking out to individual product pages. The problem I have is the all the product pages target exactly the same keywords as the main product page listing all the products. Initially all my product pages were ranking much higher then the container page, as there was little individual text on the container page, and it was being hit with a duplicate content penality I believe. To get round this, on the container page, I have incorporated a chunk of text from each product listed on the page. However, that now means "most" of the content on an individual product page is also now on the container page - therefore I am worried that i will get a duplicate content penality on the product pages, as the same content (or most of it) is on the container page. Effectively I want to consolidate the link juice of the product pages back to the container page, but i am not sure how best to do this. Would it be wise to rel=canonical all the product pages back to the container page? Rel=nofollow all the links to the product pages? - or possibly some other method? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James770 -
Best SEO Practices for Top-Level Navigation Structure
OK - First of all, thank you to those of you who view and take the time to answer our question. We are currently in the middle of re-designing our golf packages website, and we're trying to decide the best way to structure our Main Navigation for maximum SEO benefit while keeping user experience in mind. The top key phrases we are currently targeting: 1) Myrtle Beach Golf 2) Myrtle Beach Golf Packages You can find the current navigation structure we have come up with here: http://www.myrtlebeachsitemasters.com/index2.html So our question is this: We have subdivisions of: Golf Packages, Accommodations, Golf Courses Is it in our best interest to: A) Get rid of the subdivisions and consolidate them to one page? or B) Simply "NoFollow" the subdivisions within the Main Navigation? We are concerned about the subdivisons for 2 reasons: Too many internal links in Main Navigation The "first link only" rule with Google affecting our additional internal links on existing pages. THANK YOU again to those of you who take the time to answer this question. We really appreciate any clarification on this issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesO0