SEO Tips: Do Long URLs Hurt or Help Increase Google Pagerank?

Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by IdeaPro

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Over the last 2 or 3 years, there has been some discussion of the length of a URL, as it relates to pagerank or Google PR value. Some of us SEO experts support the longer URLs, while some tend to go for the shorter URLs. At IdeaPro, we believe that in general, longer URLs tend to increase Google pagerank. Here’s why…

How you end up with long urls

A long URL usually comes about because most automatic Content Management System software platforms such as Wordpress or Movable Type, Drupal, Joomla and so on have a setting or plug-in that magically produces really long URLs for each post. Sometimes you have to switch them into a search-engine-friendly mode. Of course, some web-masters actually create the document “name” in HTML manually — wow, image that!

CMS “search engine friendly” settings do this by simply taking the TITLE tag of the post of page and using it to produce a long URL that includes the main words from the title as a url-line or document name, buried down in the permalink for the page or post.

NOTE: A good plug-in for Wordpress that lets you control these factors easily is All-in-One-SEO. We suggest installing it for all Wordpress users.

For this post you’re reading now, the full search engine friendly, SEO’d URL might look something like this:

http://www.ideapro.com/seo-tips-do-long-urls-hurt-or-help-increase-google-pagerank/

This is usually considered okay by most of us “seo experts” or “web marketing guru’s”. The reason? Because it does seem to work well most of the time.

How We Got a #1 Position for “Generate Backlinks” in Google

For example, do a search in Google for one of our previous posts or articles “How to Generate Backlinks to Increase Your Google Pagerank,” which we wrote on December 6, 2006 about 1-1/2 years ago. If you search for “generate backlinks” in Google today July-2-2008, you will see that post in the #1 position, and #2 for “generating backlinks”.

Not too shabby, considering there are 3,870,000 other web-sites who are competing for this term in the Google search results. And, most of these lower-ranked sites were actually written by other SEO companies and web marketing companies. Beating them isn’t easy! The page has continued to pull-in good traffic for 18 months. This traffic is free — we didn’t buy a single click-thru visitor!

HINT — Want us to help you increase your web traffic with better free Google search results? Drop us a quick email using our Contact Us form. We work fast and our prices are reasonable.

The permalink URL for the page looks like this:

http://www.ideapro.com/how-to-generate-backlinks-to-increase-your-google-pagerank

If you scroll down the Google search results page that comes up on this search, you will notice that almost every single top-ranked site listed uses at least one of these 2 search term keywords in their URL. Some of the URLs are quite long. See a screenshot of today’s search results below…

How IdeaPro.com outranks 3,870,000 other sites

Ideapro.com is #1 rated in a
Google search for GENERATE BACKLINKS
in organic free search results as of July 2, 2008

Only 2 of the top-20 SERPs don’t include at least one of the terms. The higher ranked sites use both terms. Sites not using the terms in the URL rank lower. Sites using the term in the TITLE, description or on page content, and URL rank highest. Sites with the term(s) actually in the top-level domain or “term1term2.com” might rank even higher.

This may not be conclusive, but it IS a STRONG hint: Make sure your top keywords appear in the “name” of the page, so that they will appear in the URL. Copying the TITLE tag down into the URL appears to be the best policy.

Notice a few interesting things:

The length of the actual resulting URL does not appear to matter, if it includes the searched for terms.
The order of the terms does matter. They should appear in the order they are most likely to be searched for by the users targeted.
The complete phrase ranks higher than only part of the phrase. Using just one keyword of the 2 terms ranks lower.
Using hyphens or dashes to separate the words or using no-hyphens does not matter. Either works. You can simply run all your words together in the permalink, or use dashes — as far as Google is concerned. However, humans and other search engines may like the hyphens. That’s why I say use them.
Spell everything correctly. Spelling matters. Bad spelling gets lower rankings or no ranking at all.
Notice that none of the highly ranked URLs have really-really super long lists of keywords. You can believe that there are thousands of sites that have such extra-long URLs, but none of them show up. So, keep your URL to a “reasonable length” — something like 10-12 words tops — 6-8 is probably better

So, use long URLs. They don’t hurt, and they do give you a chance to match more searches. You can use a couple of different basic keyword phrases in one title or page name.

For example, this page title of the post you’re reading includes several popular keyword phrases:

seo tips
long urls
increase pagerank

This post might also end up highly ranked for various combinations of these key phrases, like “seo pagerank tips”, “long url seo”, “pagerank seo tips”, “pagerank seo help”, etc.

Want Professional SEO Help?

If you want help in search engine optimizing your web-site, we’re available for a reasonable fee $50 and up, payable through Paypal. Usually only takes us a day or two to get the job done. Use our Contact Us form.