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Showing posts from September, 2011

Shortening URLs - Where SEO and Taxonomy Collide

Here's a question that seems to come up frequently, about shortening URLs for SEO…the answer isn't always the same,and there's usually a conflict between the SEO strategy and the overall information classification (taxonomy) design - so here's a thought process I've been through to help evaluate the approach for answering. Question: (Note the actual client details have been anonymized to protect the innocent.) "Our URL strategy has been to use page titles as the end of URLs. So, the end of the URL for this item... http://www.[yoursite].com/Research/[Research Category]/Studies/[Date]/Evaluating-the-Effectiveness-of-[Primary Keyphrase] ...matches the page title exactly ("Evaluating the Effectiveness of [Primary Keyphrase]") Question is, is there any reason not to shorten the URLs when we create the items? So, of instead of... http://www.[yoursite].com/Research/[Research Category]/Studies/[Date]/Evaluating-the-Effectiveness-of-[Primary Keyphrase] we m