URL too long. Shorten and redirect, or leave alone?
-
MOZ is indicating that i have several URLs that are too long.
Should I shorten the URLs and redirect the long URLs to the new, shorter, URL? Or should i leave them alone, as I've been reading to avoid redirects.
-
Shorten and Redirect (With keeping the URL keyword-focused). If there is an opportunity for those website pages to rank for certain relevant searches, I absolutely think it would be worth it to go back in and spend a few minutes optimizing them as well.
You can shorten the URLs, create 301 redirects from the old URL to the new one, and then re-optimize the blog posts as a whole, as well as add some internal links with pages you are wanting to improve rankings on.
We have seen good results from doing this on our website and it can be an easy win to bumping up rankings for those pages.
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
-
Can you help by advising how to stop a URL from referring to another URL on my website with a 404 errorplease?
How to stop a URL from referring to another URL on my site. I'm getting a 404 error on a referred URL which is (https://webwritinglab.com/know-exactly-what-your-ideal-clients-want-in-8-easy-steps/[null id=43484])referred from URL (https://webwritinglab.com/know-exactly-what-your-ideal-clients-want-in-8-easy-steps/) The referred URL is the URL page that I want and I do not need it redirecting to the other URL as that's presenting a 404 error. I have tried saving the permalink in WordPress and recreated the .htaccess file and the problem is still there. Can you advise how to fix this please? Is it a case of removing the redirect? Is this advisable and how do I do that please? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Nichole.wynter20200 -
What to do with existing URL when replatforming and new URL is the same?
We are changing CMS from WordPress to Uberflip. If there is a URL that remains the same I believe we should not create a redirect. However, what happens to the old page? Should it be deleted?
Technical SEO | | maland0 -
301 redirect from dynamic url to static page
Hi, i want to redirect from this old link http://www.g-store.gr/product_info.php?products_id=1735/ to this one https://www.g-store.gr/golf-toualetas.html I have done several attempts but with no result. I anyone can help i will appreciate. My website runs in an Apache server with cpanel. Thank you
Technical SEO | | alstam0 -
Urls Too Long - Should I shorten?
On the crawl of our website we have had a warning that 157 have urls that are too long. When I look at the urls they are generally from 2016 or earlier. Should I just leave them as they are or shorten the urls and redirect to new url? Thanks
Technical SEO | | DaleZon4 -
Proper way of handling wordpress urls and redirects?
I have recently changed some of my urls in wordpress + adding a sub category in the url structure. from
Technical SEO | | Livet
www.mydomain.se/category/subcategory to www.mydomain.se/category/subcategory/subcategory2/ My products are stil under www.mydomain.se/products/cool-product and are not affected. Should I 301 the old url (www.mydomain.se/category/subcategory) to the new (www.mydomain.se/category/subcategory/subcategory2/)? If that is so, can someone recommend a good 301 redirection plugin? Thanks!0 -
I have altered a url as it was too long. Do I need to do a 301 redirect for the old url?
Crawl diagnostics has shown a url that is too long on one of our sites. I have altered it to make it shorter. Do I now need to do a 301 redirect from the old url? I have altered a url previously and the old url now goes to the home page - can't understand why. Anyone know what is best practice here? Thanks
Technical SEO | | kingwheelie0 -
Domain redirect seo
Hello, my domain www.pacomarca.com and when i start the new campaing i get this pronblem: We have detected that the domain www.pacomarca.com and the domain pacomarca.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here. my domain is in networksolutions.com. how can i resolve it? many thanks Gonzalo
Technical SEO | | Kuna0 -
Link Juice passing through a redirect of a disallowed URL
Hey guys! Suppose I disallow search bots from indexing anything on my secure server in my robots.txt, and 301 redirect all of my secure server traffic to my non-secure site. Will the search bots see the redirect before they realize that they're disallowed from accessing that page? Or will they see that page is disallowed and not follow the redirect? Should I change my robots.txt to allow search bots to crawl my secure site so they can find the redirects?
Technical SEO | | john4math0