Parent/Child Pages - Long URLs

[CatherineMay]

Looking tonight for some clarification on parent/child pages.

Specifically, I'm wondering if your child pages end up with super long URLs, is it worth it in terms of SEO to have these child pages, or is a shorter URL more important?

[CatherineMay]

Bumping this up once to see if I can get some feedback.

Any insights would be appreciated.

[dburk]

Hi CatherineMay,

Can you be more specific? How long are "super long URLs"? Maybe what you consider to be "super long" is really typical length. And why are you choosing to use "super long" URLs? Is there a specific reason you are choosing to use "super long" URLs?

[bigcat1967]

I know my (internal pages URL) is very long. I use them for long tailed KWs. Actually - it works better for SEO purposes.

[kdonn88]

I am the same with the use of keywords in my URL titles when working when with child pages. Many times you are going to want to make sure that these pages are being ranked so the use of the keyword will help with that. As far as the length. You can have a long name and still keep it easy to remember.

[smorse1]

I think a memorable url is more important than a long one, loaded with keywords.
Keep in mind that Google doesn't like lots of parameters, and they don't like parameter values that are longer than 10 characters.

[CatherineMay]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi CatherineMay,

Can you be more specific? How long are "super long URLs"? Maybe what you consider to be "super long" is really typical length. And why are you choosing to use "super long" URLs? Is there a specific reason you are choosing to use "super long" URLs?

Dan, I'm not really "choosing" to use super-long URLs, but I want some pages to be child pages, so the URLs end up including the parent name. If there's some other way to do a child page, I don't know what it is.

On further examination, I guess the URLs are not excessively long. I could also try to change the name of the parent page, but haven't yet come up with a better name.

All of this "thinking" is for a site with a domain name that isn't that great due to low searches that I'm trying to make something of anyway.

However, my basic question about he SEO benefits of a parent/child structure as opposed to short URLs remains.

[CatherineMay]

Originally Posted by smorse1

I think a memorable url is more important than a long one, loaded with keywords.
Keep in mind that Google doesn't like lots of parameters, and they don't like parameter values that are longer than 10 characters.

I have to confess here that I don't know what you mean by parameter values.

My newbieness is showing!

[dburk]

Originally Posted by CatherineMay

Dan, I'm not really "choosing" to use super-long URLs, but I want some pages to be child pages, so the URLs end up including the parent name. If there's some other way to do a child page, I don't know what it is.

On further examination, I guess the URLs are not excessively long. I could also try to change the name of the parent page, but haven't yet come up with a better name.

All of this "thinking" is for a site with a domain name that isn't that great due to low searches that I'm trying to make something of anyway.

However, my basic question about he SEO benefits of a parent/child structure as opposed to short URLs remains.

Hi CatherineMay,

If you are using keyword rich categories as parent to your child pages it might be beneficial. However, I have noticed that Google uses the principle of prominence within relevancy signals. The closer to the beginning of a URL you keywords are located the more prominence they hold. If you adhere to this principle with your page title and use Wordpress' custom permalink setting with /%postname%/ you can keep your targeted keywords in a fairly prominent position within your URL.