URL Length Issue

[Cart_generation]

MOZ is telling me the URLs are too long.

I did a little research and I found out that the length of the URLs is not really a serious problem. In fact, others recommend ignoring the situation.

Even on their blog I found this explanation:

"Shorter URLs are generally preferable. You do not need to take this to the extreme, and if your URL is already less than 50-60 characters, do not worry about it at all. But if you have URLs pushing 100+ characters, there's probably an opportunity to rewrite them and gain value.

This is not a direct problem with Google or Bing - the search engines can process long URLs without much trouble. The issue, instead, lies with usability and user experience. Shorter URLs are easier to parse, copy and paste, share on social media, and embed, and while these may all add up to a fractional improvement in sharing or amplification, every tweet, like, share, pin, email, and link matters (either directly or, often, indirectly)."

And yet, I have these questions: In this case, why do I get this error telling me that the urls are too long, and what are the best practices to get this out?

Thank You

[slatronica]

It's a signal that may be valuable for sites but one that may not have a huge impact on it's own.

I like to have shorter URLs because it ends up being easier and more friendly to share. Longer URLs can be a deterrent. I also like to pay closer attention to the click depth of the page, not just length of the URL.

I'm not sure you'll be hurt by a long URL like:
http://www.yourtld.com/blog/02/08/18/some-crazy-long-slug-nested-with-dates-that-triggers-moz-errors

I would bet you can get that page ranked if the content is valuable enough, even with a longer URL. But the issues start to pop up If you have a site that has content only found by browsing the nested pages it is a larger issue.

For example:
http://yourtold.com/services/cleaning/windows/indoors
This is an example where I'm really worried about the length, but more importantly the overall structure of the URL and site. It may be difficult users, and crawlers to find this content making it less search friendly overall when the content is 4-5 layers deep.

[NickW816]

Agree with Steve above. URL length is a very minimal SEO factor, to attempt to shorten them you could do an analysis of your URLs "silo structure" and see if you can get rid of unnecessary parts of the link.

For example, if you have "xyz.com/services/marketing/seo/local-seo", you can maybe cut "services" and "marketing" (and maybe even "seo" from the structure, so the URL can just be "xyz.com/local-seo", and then 301 the old URL to the new of course.

Check out this article from Search Engine Land for more info on URL Structure for SEO- https://searchengineland.com/infographic-ultimate-guide-seo-friendly-urls-249397

[SMTUSA]

Question: if you start redirecting the longer URLs for the shorter, don't you get actually do get dinged for - ecessive 301s or daisy-chain 301s.

How do you handle this for large sites with products? Canonicals?