Is it better to shorten my existing url to use only keyword after domain with a 301 redirect from existing url

[mrkingsley]

I have a long existing URL that has included my key word but the url has about 5 additional words in the text ( eg url would have

"  /super widgets in stock at the widget store "   as url text after domain.         keywords is super widget

The URL was at the top of search results for my keyword for many years until recently. Is it better to shorten my url text to now use only my keyword " /super-widgets " after the domain with a 301 direct from my existing url to optimize it

Thanks

[Seenlyst]

Hello there,

Google will truncate your URL when it exceeds a pixel length. I usually keep it as short as possible, make sure it let people understand what they might expect from that page, but not too long to look annoying. Here are some tips:

• Keep it as short as possible
• Don't use stop words
• Avoid using special characters (dash is fine and can be used as spaces)

I couldn't list all of the tips but this few guides will help you whenever you creating a new page and URL.

https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls

https://moz.com/learn/seo/url

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-friendly-url-structure-2/202790/

Hope this helps,
Joseph Yap

[GastonRiera]

Hi!
im just jumping in to say that the rule in URLs should always be to help users.
Think it this way: Users should be able to understand the content (or what that page is about) with the URL and also be able to remember in order to just type it into the address box in a browser.

Of course that is utopic, but also misleading to say that focus only in keeping it short. Because only for the sake of shortening the URL you might harm the other idea behind: helping users.

What Joseph said is correct, just wanted to express my thoughts on this.

Also, yes. I'd go with /super-widgets if and only if your content will be talking about  super widget (what ever thar are) and you're trying to rank for that exact keyword.

Hope it helps.
Best luck
GR

[NickW816]

Hi Howard, to answer your question, in my experience 9 times out of 10 the answer is Yes.

An example of this is a page on our website that we were trying to rank for "PPC Kansas City".

Initially, our URL was https://seo-kansas-city.com/services/google-adwords-campaigns/, but we then changed it to https://seo-kansas-city.com/services/ppc/ and added a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL.

This resulted in our rankings jumping from page 2 on Google to the top 3-5 positions on page 1 of Google. We also still rank in the top 3-5 for "google adwords kansas city" and "google adwords campaigns kansas city".

I would just be sure to be tracking the target keyword rankings for that page specifically before you make the change.

Hope this helps and best of success to you!

[mrkingsley]

Thank you for your feedback.

[mrkingsley]

Thanks for your reply. I guess I'm trying to use my Meta Title to help users understand and using the URL text to focus more sharply on the keyword itself, and additionally trying to weigh out the  benefits of focus on keyword vs user benefits vs the loss of any link juice due to 301 redirecting from what was once a strong page to my new re-optimized page.

[LureCreative]

Shorter is better, we often use https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo as a guideline for on-site stuff like this, and we have seen increases in rankings wiht shortening a URL to just include the target keyword and then setting up a proper 301 redirect as well.

[NickW816]

No problem. URL shortening with 301 redirects and making sure it is a keyword-focused URL path is a great way to often get some quick wins and improvements in rankings. Godspeed!

[mrkingsley]

Thanks Joseph

[mrkingsley]

Thanks again. Just wondering if you know how long it takes for the redirect to start passing on seo value once I set up the 301 and delete the original page

[GastonRiera]

Hi Howard,
Sorry for the late reply, just been terribly busy.

Dont worry about the redirection, as long its 301 and dont have more than 3 hops or redirection loops.
Remember that the ranking strenght is not in the URL and it being short or having the keyword focused in the path. Your page will rank as long as google understand that you bring value to searchers and you send Google the correct signals about the keyword.
Be consistent with the content, URLs, title and meta tags.

Best luck!
GR

[mrkingsley]

Thank you Gaston.  Anyone have any input regarding SSL certificates and submitting various url versions to Google Search Console. My certificate is only for a single url so should this be the site that I specify to GSC. Volusion does not allow wild card or multi-site ssl certificates. I'm a little confused as to what is the best way to proceed. The older non secured url version is the one with a long analytics history.