• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        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.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          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.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • 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

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          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
        • My Q&A
        • 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. On-Page Optimization
        4. How important are clean URLs?

        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.

        How important are clean URLs?

        On-Page Optimization
        5
        5
        1792
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • Gavo
          Gavo last edited by

          Just wanting to understand the importance of clean URLs in regards to SEO effectiveness.

          Currently, we have URLs for a site that reads as follows: http://www.interhampers.com.au/c/90/Corporate Gift Hampers

          Should we look into modifying this so that the URL does not have % or figures?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • kbates
            kbates Subscriber @Shakur last edited by

            What if you have a client with a LOT of ugly URLs that need to be cleaned up?

            The plan is to create 301 redirects for every page that we change. But, let's say we're talking about 50+ product pages.

            In your opinion, is it a problem to make that many changes at once?
            Would you paste them out?
            If so, how many at a time?
            Also, is it a problem to have that many 301's on your website?

            Thank you!

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

              Yes! As Suresh and Shakur said, that it is preferred by people and search engines. People have hard time reading the urls with special characters and a hyphen is recommended.

              Regards

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

                Hi there!

                Clean URLs are preferred by people, and it just so happens that search engines prefer them as well. Keywords in URLs are, more often than not, used to identify the relevance of a page when a search for a particular keyword is performed. However, it is not generally recommended to stuff keywords in your URLs for SEO purposes. The idea is to deliver enhanced usability to help users remember and share your URLs more easily. At the same time, clean URLs also facilitate a search engine’s ability to identify the relevance of page content to a particular search query, in order to choose what to display in search results.

                So yes, it´s better if you modify all of them and make it clean.

                Good luck

                kbates 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • sureshchowdary
                  sureshchowdary last edited by

                  Definitely you should look into modifying the url structure. % represents blank spaces in the url. You can replace the blank spaces with "-". Google recommends hyphenated url's rather than blank spaces and underscores. The url's should be clean with every word seperated by "-" and the url size can be anywhere around 80 to 90 characters in length.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  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

                  • HashtagHustler

                    Url shows up in "Inurl' but not when using time parameters

                    Hey everybody, I have been testing the Inurl: feature of Google to try and gauge how long ago Google indexed our page. SO, this brings my question. If we run inurl:https://mysite.com all of our domains show up. If we run inurl:https://mysite.com/specialpage the domain shows up as being indexed If I use the "&as_qdr=y15" string to the URL, https://mysite.com/specialpage does not show up. Does anybody have any experience with this? Also on the same note when I look at how many pages Google has indexed it is about half of the pages we see on our backend/sitemap. Any thoughts would be appreciated. TY!

                    On-Page Optimization | | HashtagHustler
                    1
                  • doctecs

                    Link flow for multiple links to same URL

                    Hi there,
                    my question is as follows: How does Google handle link flow if two links in a given page point to the same URL? (do they flow link individually or not?) This seems to be a newbie question, but actually it seems that there is little evidence and even also little consensus in the SEO community about this detail. Answers should include source Information about the current state of art at Google is preferable The question is not about anchor text, general best practises for linking, "PageRank is dead" etc. We do know that the "historical" PageRank was implemented (a long time ago) without special handling for multiple links, as e.g. last stated by Matt Cutts in this video: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 On the other hand, many people from the SEO community say that only the first link counts. But so far I could not find any data to back this up, which is quite surprising.

                    On-Page Optimization | | doctecs
                    0
                  • Substance-create

                    Will changing a URL negatively affect ranking?

                    Hello Mozzers, We would like to change the URL for a page on our website which ranks well for some our keyphrases/words. We are hoping the change of URL, through the addition of an additional keyword would help boost the rank of that URL further. At the moment out page gets 2 x A and 2 x B 1xF on the MOZ page rank tool using 5 keyphrase/word variations . One phrase ranks 4, one ranks 3 and the other 3 are 'not in the top 50' Our plan was to change the URL, using SHF404, and use 'Fetch' in the Google search console to re-submit the page to Google. Appreciate you can't give any guarantees how Google will behave, just wondered what your thoughts were on the wisdom of changing the URL in the first place? Thanks Ian

                    On-Page Optimization | | Substance-create
                    0
                  • Gaolga

                    How to remove subdomains in a clean way?

                    Hello, I have a main domain example.com where I have my main content and then I created 3 subdomains one.example.com, two.example.com and three.example.com I think the low ranking of my subdomains is affecting the ranking of my main domain, the one I care the most. So, I decided to get rid of the subdomains. The thing is that only for one.example.com I could transfer the content to my main domain and create 301 redirects. For the other two subdomains I cannot integrate the content in my main domain as it doesn't make sense. Whats the cleanest way to make them dissapear? (just put a redirect to my main domain even if the content is not the same) or just change the robots to "noindex" and put a 404 page in the index of each subdomain. I want to use the way that will harm the least the performance with Google. Regards!

                    On-Page Optimization | | Gaolga
                    0
                  • SamCUK

                    Should I redirect mobile traffic to a different url? Will it hurt SEO?

                    I'm working on a site that has lots of great content and ranks well but essentially the money is generated by affiliate links. I don't have a mobile version of the site but the company I'm affiliated with does offer a mobile redirect to their domain. Will redirecting mobile traffic to a different url hurt my SEO? I think the user will get a better experience by landing on a mobile page but I don't know if google will see it like that. Any thoughts?

                    On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK
                    0
                  • WebRiverGroup

                    Are H1 tags important or influential?

                    We are in the process of correcting our site in hopes that Google will rank us higher in the SERP. We have many pages that have multiple H1 tags or no H1 tag at all. How important is the H1 tag? Will it help us increase our ranking on Google? Thanks

                    On-Page Optimization | | WebRiverGroup
                    0
                  • EssEEmily

                    Image Optimization - File Name Important?

                    I am currently working on a site with 100+ recipes that all have image file names that are relevant, but not optimized for keyword purposes. I'm wondering - from an SEO perspective - would it be worth my time to go back through all of the images and rename them with keywords in mind? On my own site I have always done this as a "best practice" but I'm curious - does it make a difference to search engines? Does anyone have any recent research/experiences that they would like to share? Thanks!

                    On-Page Optimization | | EssEEmily
                    0
                  • BigBlaze205

                    Image file name, is it important

                    If I use the same image all over my site, do I need to change the file name to avoid duplicate? Different alt text will be use on those images

                    On-Page Optimization | | BigBlaze205
                    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.