Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

      Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Get found
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Link Building
    4. Are long URLs bad for SEO?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Are long URLs bad for SEO?

    Link Building
    6
    6
    8048
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Blind_Foundation
      Blind_Foundation last edited by

      Hi,

      I would like to know how bad is the long URLs that I have on my website.

      At the moment we have 543 long urls and I was wondering how big is the impact in my SEO.

      Thank you

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
      • Kelly-Anne
        Kelly-Anne last edited by

        After 512 pixels, Google will truncate your URL in search results pages. A good rule of thumb is to keep your URLs as short as you can, without losing their general meaning.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • JessyHuang008
          JessyHuang008 last edited by

          thanks you for information

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • brodywebdesign
            brodywebdesign @NickW816 last edited by

            I am about 100% sure that had to with applying your keyword into the URL.  I still haven't really been able to find any concrete information on how having to long of a keyword effects rankings. I currently have a customer who decided to put all these dimensions into his product URL's making them way to long. I just want to know if it's worth the work to go in and shorten all of those and remove the dimensions.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • VickyXM
              VickyXM last edited by

              Good question, I have about 300 pages with long URL, but I wonder, what is better here, to have long URLs or a lot of 301 redirects? Which option will make less harm?

              Thanks

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • NickW816
                NickW816 last edited by

                Like most things in SEO, it depends. There was an industry case study that Brian Dean often references, where they determined that shorter URLs tended to rank higher on Google. We have a personal example of this-

                When trying to get our https://seo-kansas-city.com/services/google-adwords-campaigns/ to rank for the local term "PPC Kansas City", we decided to shorten the URL and include the keyword in it, with a proper 301 redirection in place from the old to the new URL, we changed it to https://seo-kansas-city.com/services/ppc/, which shortened the URL by about 25 characters.

                Granted the keyword now being in the URL string helped us as well, but doing this one change took our Google ranking from the bottom of page 2 on Google to the middle of page 1 on Google, and we still rank on page 1 for "PPC Kansas City".

                In summary, I am a believer in shorter, keyword-focused URLs and definitely recommend trying to shorten some if you can!

                Nick White
                SEO Services KC
                https://seo-kansas-city.com/

                brodywebdesign 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                Browse Questions

                Explore more categories

                • Moz Tools

                  Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                • SEO Tactics

                  Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                • Community

                  Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                • Digital Marketing

                  Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                • Research & Trends

                  Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                • Support

                  Connect on product support and feature requests.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • wonderd24

                  Backlink Transparency with SEO Agency

                  Hello everyone. I recently started working with an SEO agency and today they gave me an updated keyword report which showed some increase in rankings. I was not aware that any backlinks had been created yet so I asked for a report of the links. Their response is below and I am just wondering if this is normal practice being I have not worked with any type of SEO agency yet. "
                  Hey Daniel, We release a small report on them which the guest blog team will do soon. We don't reveal all backlink sources unfortunately because people have tried to bother the webmasters we have and basically steal our techniques. But rest assured you will be ranking at the top of the pack with our methods 😃  
                  "

                  Link Building | | wonderd24
                  1
                • whiteonlySEO

                  Can affiliate links benefit or hurt my seo?

                  I have just signed up with a company to do affiliate marketing for my site. I am now in the process of  reaching out to publishers and seeing who will publish my link on their site. Is there any benefit in terms of seo for having these links, and can there be any potential downside to these links as well?

                  Link Building | | whiteonlySEO
                  0
                • LawMarketingYLF

                  What impact does multiple links from the same c-block have on SEO?

                  Recently there's been a move made in my company to only allow backlinks from websites on different c-block IP addresses. The most links we have from one c-block is 15. There is a wide variety of other IP addresses linking to our site as well. My question is - do we need to be so restrictive with using websites from the same c-block as long as the neighbourhood is good and we're not linking sites with full identical IPs (matching d-block as well)?

                  Link Building | | LawMarketingYLF
                  0
                • isabelledylag

                  Naked link anchors or long tail anchors ?

                  Hi, Do naked link anchors such as "www.mysite.com/my-category" have the same SEO power as long tails anchors? What about the UX which such anchors? Lately a site published our back-to-school article with this horrible naked link anchor, it does not look friendly to me as a reader, but I am wondering whether I should bother, how important it is for google and for readers? Thank you in advance. Isabelle

                  Link Building | | isabelledylag
                  0
                • arthureray

                  How relevant are citations to SEO?

                  'How much do citations help your seo in view of the direction that google seems to be headed where content is king? Should the citations not be relevant to your site?'.

                  Link Building | | arthureray
                  0
                • seoptus

                  Is there any importance of email signature links from SEO perspective?

                  We see website links in email signatures. As recently Google has changed its inbox format showing social email (Google+) separately. Is there any importance of email signature links from SEO perspective?

                  Link Building | | seoptus
                  0
                • shopbloc

                  How long after disavow do you submit reconsideration?

                  Hello everyone! I recently submitted a disavow link file to Google for the left over links I was unable to remove after the course of 3 months. I know that I have to submit a reconsideration request, too, but I wasn't sure how long I should wait. Will it be obvious once the disavow file has processed or is there no notification of it being processed/completed? I haven't seen any posts on other individuals mentioning anything on this topic. Thank you for your time in sharing any experiences you may have had or heard about! Tamra

                  Link Building | | shopbloc
                  0
                • theLotter

                  Does blocking domains help remove bad links?

                  I have affiliate websites that are harming for one of 2 reasons: 1. They are on adult websites (and I don't want to be in a bad neighborhood) or 2. They are using a Frameset (so their content appears identical to mine and I am getting "credit" for all their junk links) I cannot get these websites to remove our links so I have blocked their IPs on our production firewall. Is this an effective method or should I do something else with these links?

                  Link Building | | theLotter
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.