All Questions
99 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
19
votes
5
answers
2k
views
Do shorter URLs benefit the pagerank and overall SEO value of pages vs. a longer categorised url showing the site structure
We are coming to the end of a long project in which we are upgrading our client's site from a custom built CMS to the latest version of Umbraco CMS whilst also making their website responsive. As part ...
- 291
11
votes
1
answer
744
views
Multi Language URLs
I'm building an online store that will be supported in 3 languages: English, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese.
My question is whether or not it is a good idea to make language specific ...
- 273
9
votes
5
answers
905
views
Combine websites without hurting SEO
I have a friend that I'm helping out with some web design. Basically, the guy owns a few businesses that are all complementary of each other and he wants to combine them all into a single site. There'...
- 241
7
votes
1
answer
4k
views
Does a unique ID and title in URL slug improve SEO?
Stack Exchange posts have URLs like this:
http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/9848/squeezing-all-the-seo-out-of-a-url-as-possible
Which is the format: /questions/{id}/{slugified-post-title}...
- 901
6
votes
1
answer
1k
views
What is the way to properly implement a Facebook Like button on a page for best SEO purposes?
On our site we want to put a Facebook Like button/widget-thingy. It is possible to create a like button, where the URL associated with the button is the page it sits on, rather than a Facebook page.
...
- 895
5
votes
2
answers
3k
views
How to handle URLs that differ in case-sensitivity and show same content
For to the following URLs:
http://mydomain.com/page
http://mydomain.com/Page
I'm showing the same content. Can this hurt SEO? I understand that theoretically it can, but does Google really penalize ...
- 2,018
5
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Is large scale of 301 redirects for URL change harmful for SEO?
I have changed the URL for a large portion of my website (150,000+ URLs) to follow a SEO-friendly structure like all lower-case and hyphenated URLs (earlier they were capitalized at places and had ...
- 446
5
votes
6
answers
838
views
Do keyword-based filenames and URLs really matter?
We've developed a dynamic web application which uses URLs such as product.cfm?id=42 but our marketing team says we should use search friendly URLs and put our keywords into the URLs (so it would be ...
- 1,764
4
votes
2
answers
849
views
SEO: best way to deal with short lifetime URLs?
I am currently in the process of redesigning a job advert site and am trying to put a lot more effort into my SEO.
My question is how should I deal with the URLs that point to job adverts when the ...
- 143
4
votes
3
answers
930
views
Title of the page in search results and title of google's cached version are different. Why?
Check this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:gunlawsbystate.com+kansas+gun+laws
The title of the first result is "Kansas Gun Laws - Gun Laws By State". Although, on the page google has cached the ...
- 71
4
votes
3
answers
667
views
Good Practice for Formatting SEO-Friendly URLs?
Does anybody know what the best SEO practice and most effective format for URLs is currently?
All lowercase or mixed case? Example:
http://www.mysite.com/What-is-My-Site/
OR
http://www.mysite.com/...
Slinky
3
votes
1
answer
253
views
How to construct the URL for search with multiple input?
I am having a home page where I can search on multiple tags. How should I construct the URL?
Suppose I search for tag = test_1 and tag = test_2
Should I construct the url like
http://www.example....
- 133
2
votes
1
answer
509
views
2 URLs pointing to one website with a unique canonical URL
I have 2 domains submitted to Google that both point to my WordPress site. I am using Yoast SEO plugin to take care of the basic SEO metadata for the website.
When I view the source for each URL I ...
- 145
2
votes
2
answers
211
views
Would including some of the same words in every product URL be considered keyword stuffing?
I have about 130 products on my site, and I want the URL to look like this example.com/unique-product-name-ratings-reviews-prices.
Since I have 130 of these pages, I am concerned about the (ratings-...
- 391
1
vote
3
answers
379
views
SEO pagination for items sorted in reverse chronological order
Let's have items I90, I89, ..., I2, I1 where I1 is the oldest and I100 is the newest. They are paginated and there are 30 items per page.
Which is better URL from SEO point of view?
1) /items?page=1 ...
- 111
1
vote
2
answers
387
views
Language Specific URLs for SEO
I'm currently building a website that is not targeted to an English speaking audience. So my thoughts are that if I were to make the URLs in the language of choice (in this case Spanish) then would ...
matsko
1
vote
1
answer
395
views
Using request_uri instead of Query string affects SEO
Out of curiosity only. If I used (see below)
https://www.example.com/index.php?blog/game/free-mmorg-review
will it affect SEO rankings? The above url clearly give a simple hierarchy of the web. So I ...
- 113
1
vote
1
answer
612
views
Pagination without pagination URLs - is it bad for SEO?
I've read a few articles about pagination pitfalls but none really describe my situation. I have a products page rendered with ReactJS with about 300 products and pagination (I am also using server-...
- 135
0
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Use forward slashes (/) or dashes (-) for URL design in 2019? (for categories in e-commerce)
What is a better URL design for an e-commerce website?
Case a:
http://example.com/shoes-women
http://example.com/shoes-women-red
http://example.com/high-heels-red
http://example.com/high-heels-red-...
- 199
14
votes
1
answer
2k
views
How to handle canonical url changes like Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow sites all have pretty urls which include the question title. In the HTML it also have canonical url for that page.
I just found out that when I change the question title, the url is ...
- 738
13
votes
3
answers
8k
views
Will having product ID in URLs hurt SEO compared to a URL with only keywords?
Say I have a web shop with a product (optimus-prime), in a category (superheros) such that it has the URL:
www.example.com/superheroes/optimus-prime
Now I want to prepend the product ID (99) to the ...
- 233
12
votes
2
answers
1k
views
URL paths and their effect on SEO
We are developing a website where there will be two distinct types of content: galleries and photos.
It makes little sense to use URL paths like /gallery/photo as some photos can appear in more than ...
- 3,683
11
votes
5
answers
401
views
Which of these 3 URL-Rewritings are better SEO friendly URLs?
Imagine my current flat-file no-CMS website with an URL like http://example.com/en/tomato.
This is of course very unsexy and could be anything really from tomato soup, tomato the music band, tomato ...
- 847
10
votes
2
answers
4k
views
For SEO, should the path portion of the URL be localized?
I have a site that have localized content. I would like to know if it's really important to also translate the URL paths to access the content. For example:
Today, I'm handling the URLS like these:
...
- 201
8
votes
3
answers
445
views
How do I handle the URL of an article that sits in more than one category
In our knowledge base (hosted in Wordpress) we have one article that is relevant to 2 categories. I do not want to duplicate the article and have it sitting separately in each category for fear of ...
- 503