All Questions
240 questions
132
votes
8
answers
41k
views
How should I structure my URLs for both SEO and localization?
When I set up a site in multiple languages, how should I set up my URLs for search engines and usability?
Let's say my site is www.example.com, and I'm translating into French and Spanish. What is ...
- 8,678
27
votes
4
answers
7k
views
Well structured URLs vs. URLs optimized for SEO
Let’s take an example of a movie site. So a well structured set of URLs for this site can be:
Movie page - example.com/movies/the-matrix
Review for movie - example.com/movies/the-matrix/reviews
...
- 373
26
votes
4
answers
20k
views
Are keywords in URLs good SEO or needlessly redundant?
A coworker and I are locked in a debate over the value of SEO keywords in the URL of a page. She wants to change all the filenames of the HTML pages of a fencing company so they look like residential-...
- 472
15
votes
3
answers
3k
views
What is the best file extension for an SEO friendly URL?
I'm working for a website to convert the website URL to an SEO friendly URL. I plan to use this:
example.com/category-name/pageid-123-page-name
I looked at some similarly categorized, highly ranked ...
- 265
17
votes
1
answer
8k
views
Should I submit https:// and http:// in Google Search Console both with and without the www?
In my site I'm redirecting everything (http://, http://www., https://) to https://www.example.com.
Google webmaster tools says: Make sure you add both "www" and "non-www" versions for your site. Also,...
- 439
56
votes
4
answers
34k
views
Does it make a difference if your URL path ends in a trailing slash or not?
Does it make any difference to SEO ratings what-so-ever if your url has a trailing slash:
http://www.example.com/some/slug/paths/
as opposed to one that does not:
http://www.example.com/some/slug/...
- 1,378
27
votes
7
answers
12k
views
Should I use a file extension or not?
I've always wondered about this and never found a good solution.
But this question reminded me of it.
When I have a URL on my website it can be displayed and accessed any of the following ways:
...
- 834
121
votes
13
answers
15k
views
URLs: Should I use hyphens, underscores or plus symbols?
Which is better for search engines?
example.com/my_cool_page.html
example.com/my-cool-page.html
example.com/my+cool+page.html
delete
26
votes
1
answer
25k
views
Is trailing slash automagically added on click of home page URL in browser?
I am asking this because whenever I hover over a link to a home page (e.g. http://www.example.com), I notice that a trailing slash is always added (as observed on the status bar of the browser) ...
- 1,608
18
votes
1
answer
6k
views
Canonical URL for a home page and trailing slashes
My home page could be potentially linked as:
http://example.com
http://example.com/
http://example.com/?ref=1
http://example.com/index.html
http://example.com/index.html?ref=2
(the same page is ...
- 2,373
3
votes
3
answers
2k
views
HTTP to HTTPS: Wait for new sitemap to be indexed?
Running HTTP and HTTPS versions of the site side-by-side.
HTTP is canonical right now. Goal is to change that to HTTPS.
Created a new site in Search Console and submitted a new sitemap 4 days ago.
...
- 31
29
votes
2
answers
23k
views
Is a URL with a query string better or worse for SEO then one without one?
I want to know, is there a huge difference in terms of SEO between these URLs:
example.com/ontario/toronto/listings
or
example.com/listings.php?p=ontario&c=toronto
Will one URL rank higher ...
- 437
17
votes
2
answers
4k
views
What is the best placement for the ID in a URL for SEO?
I would like to know what's the best location for an ID in a SEO optimized URL:
http://www.example.com/123/slug-title
http://www.example.com/slug-title-123
- 303
31
votes
2
answers
2k
views
How to use rel='canonical' properly
I have 3 URLS that serve the same data:
www.example.com/product/foo
www.example.com/product/foo?id=1
www.example.com?product=foo
For Google's sake I want the URL www.example.com/product/foo to be ...
- 12.8k
8
votes
3
answers
744
views
Why treat these as URLs with different path capitalization and trailing slash as different?
These are all strictly different urls:
http://www.example.com/page
http://www.example.com/pAge
http://www.example.com/page/
http://www.example.com/paGE/
I get that it conforms to the strict ISO ...
- 2,400
27
votes
5
answers
2k
views
How to correctly mark up different versions of the same document which are non-canonical
The use case is a document which has multiple versions which are all simultaneously available. For example, documentation on a product for each version of that software:
/v1/install-guide
/v2/install-...
- 371
84
votes
8
answers
8k
views
Should I include "www" in my website's URLs? What are the pros and cons?
What are the pros and cons of having http://www.example.com/ vs http://example.com/?
For example a problem I'm aware of is that if I use a domain without www I can't set a cookie for the current ...
- 2,585
6
votes
4
answers
295
views
SEO and URL Shorteners
When you have a link from lets say twitter that is t.co/foo that links back to your website how does that effect SEO and how do the major search engines handle Shortened URLs?
- 2,016
24
votes
5
answers
72k
views
Which special characters are safe to use in url?
Which special characters are safe to use in url?
- 345
24
votes
3
answers
12k
views
What does WWW do?
To be clear: I am not asking whether or not I should use www in my url, or what the pros and cons are, that topic is well covered. I also wasn't sure if this was a Stack Overflow, Server Fault, or ...
user6585
14
votes
4
answers
14k
views
What should filenames and URLs of images contain for SEO benefit?
We know that good site architecture usually looks like this:
example-company.com/
example-company.com/about/
example-company.com/contact/
example-company.com/products/
example-company.com/products/...
- 1,444
11
votes
1
answer
1k
views
URL path structure for a website with several directories
I am making a website with several directories that will have a high amount of content.
For now I have separated the URLs into categories so that they’re like this:
www.example.com/student/
www....
- 356
8
votes
3
answers
50k
views
How to remove trailing slashes from URL with .htaccess?
The situation
Across the entire domain, we'd like the URLs to hide file extensions and remove trailing slashes, independent of the domain name itself (as in, works on any domain).
Sample of our ...
- 604
7
votes
3
answers
6k
views
Does www and non-www suffer duplicate content penalty?
Do you know if I should use <link rel="canonical" tag, or 301 redirect from:
http://example.com to http://www.example.com
...to avoid a duplicate content penalty in case other pages link to the ...
- 203
5
votes
2
answers
755
views
When translating a site go with URLs in Chinese or English?
What is the best practice when translating a site to Chinese, go with URLs in Chinese or English?
Could you please share the reason why?
- 53
4
votes
1
answer
977
views
To change URL to user friendly URL [duplicate]
I'm refactoring my ASP.net application from ASP.net 3.5 to 4.0. Also I'm changing the URLs to user friendly URLs /product.aspx?id=100 to /product-name/100.
All my pages are indexed by search engines ...
- 177
57
votes
3
answers
75k
views
What is the difference between a URI and a URL?
I have read these pages:
http://www.w3.org/TR/uri-clarification/
http://www.damnhandy.com/2007/11/19/uri-vs-url-whats-the-difference/
I know basic about URL, URN, and URI; but little on their ...
- 705
45
votes
4
answers
83k
views
What does a double slash in the URL path mean?
What do double slashes often found in URLs mean?
For example:
http://www.example.com/A/B//C/
Please note: I'm not referring to the beginning right after http:.
- 1,897
22
votes
3
answers
10k
views
Should my URLs be lowercase?
According to Understanding SEO Friendly URL Syntax Practices I should change
http://example.com/Hello-Dolly
To
http://example.com/hello-dolly
The reasons given are:
URLs, in general, are ...
- 322
19
votes
4
answers
90k
views
What is good URI design?
How should a good URI be designed? What are the factors to consider? What are the pros and cons of the variants?
Factors that makes up a good URI
Stability over time
Short
Give the user an idea what ...
15
votes
5
answers
8k
views
Benefit of date in URL segments
I was curious about the date in URL segments, is there any SEO point of benefit? For example the following URLs:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/18/netflix-will-launch-in-the-netherlands-later-this-...
- 397
12
votes
4
answers
2k
views
What is the difference between a homepage link with or without a trailing slash?
What is the difference between these two URLs:
http://example.com/
http://example.com
Should we always add the final / or avoid it? Does it make a difference?
- 285
8
votes
3
answers
654
views
Squeezing all the SEO out of a URL as possible
I am working on an ecommerce site, I told our SEO consultant that I plan to make the URL scheme: /products/<id>/<name>. This is similar to Stackoverflow's URLs which are /questions/<id&...
- 299
7
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Does the "canonical name" in DNS make any difference to search engines?
Some of our sites are setup with an "a record" to an IP address and some are setup as a cname of a server that then has an "a name" to the same server IP. I want it to be consistent.
Which is the ...
- 171
5
votes
1
answer
88
views
SEO consequences for category pages 404-ing
Question, is it ok for one of the pages levels to 404? (SEO-wise)
Let's say I have a sitemap like this:
example.com
--/services
--/foo
--/bar
--/sectors
--/my-sector
--/another-sector
--/...
- 53
4
votes
1
answer
806
views
Can a URL that is not linked to from anywhere be discovered?
Let's say I have a URL that is not linked to from anywhere, and let's say the file portion is very long, so that it's unlikely it could be accidentally entered. Something like ...
- 143
3
votes
1
answer
413
views
Does Rel=Canonical Pass PR from Links or Just Fix Dup Content
One of the issues with duplicate content is that links can be split across several versions of your page, it was my understanding the a 301 redirect is really the only option for retaining some of the ...
- 4,292
1
vote
1
answer
698
views
Local TLD vs. .com and .com/nl vs .nl
I basically have 2 questions about local TLD vs .com.
First question: There already exists a website "keyword.nl" with a crappy website, no SEO optimisation. Is it possible for a website "keyword.com"...
- 375
65
votes
3
answers
33k
views
How can URLs have a dot . at the end, e.g. www.bla.de.?
I never believed URLs could have a period at the end, as in www.google.de. (which obvious is not working).
However, www.youtu.be. is working perfectly well. How did they manage that?
- 805
11
votes
4
answers
19k
views
Hide a Subdomain from Google/Search Engine SEO Result?
I have a subomain which I do not want to be listed in any search engine result. Let say I have:
http://www.example.com
http://child.example.com
How can I hide all URLs of child.example.com domain ...
- 293
10
votes
3
answers
9k
views
Why is Google indexing pages with ?utm_campaign query string
Recently I have noticed that Google is indexing URLs containing utm_campaign, utm_source and utm_medium query string arguments. In the results, Google shows URLs with these query strings rather than ...
- 629
7
votes
4
answers
2k
views
Are shorter URLS better for SEO?
Many people shorten their URLs. But as per my understanding it creates overhead of extra redirection, other can not guess about the target article with their url, and it should be less friendly for "...
- 1,228
5
votes
1
answer
978
views
Should we localize URLs for default language or not?
I have a website running in English and Japanese and the default language is Japanese.
What are the advantages of one over the other solution:
Solution 1. When accessing example.com, you will see ...
- 245
4
votes
2
answers
2k
views
SEO-friendly way to pass multiple values in a URL parameter
What is the correct/recommended way from a SEO point of view to pass multiple parameter values for a single key in a URL.
e.g. my online store sells the watches that I'd like filtering using facets ...
Gdev
4
votes
3
answers
467
views
Is placing one or two keywords in the URLs still good for SEO?
My urls do not seem to have my main keywords in them. Is this bad for SEO? Should I include them?
Of course I do not mean actually writing one keyword after each other, but have an organically / ...
1
vote
2
answers
107
views
Subcategorising for URL structure
Please explain which is the best URL structure and why:
website.com/apartments-to-let/manhattan
or
website.com/apartments-to-let-manhattan
This is a property site. Is it best for the bots to break ...
- 181
1
vote
2
answers
343
views
Can domain masking be used to move content from a subdomain to a subdirectory?
example.com is hosted on IP address c.c.c.c at host1, no access any windows server admin at all
blog.example.com is on IP a.a.a.a at host2, full access to Linux server admin, using WordPress
So ...
- 11
85
votes
10
answers
83k
views
Why are URLs case-sensitive?
My question: When URLs were first designed, why was case-sensitivity made a feature? I ask this because it seems to me (i.e., a layperson) that case-insensitivity would be preferred to prevent ...
- 1,001
31
votes
5
answers
4k
views
Why is it preferable to use paths with slashes instead of query-string variables in a web page URL?
Why is it preferable to use paths with slashes instead of query-string variables in a web page URL?
- 3,773
28
votes
4
answers
42k
views
What is the purpose of leading slash in HTML URLs?
I have noticed that some blogs posts have links using a value starting with / in the href.
For example:
<a href="/somedir/somepage.html">My Page</a>
Does the leading / mean the path is ...
- 4,625