Member Avatar for Timra

Hi

I would like to know if there is a page name length that we should not go over

like : this_page_name_is_very_long_or_is_it.htm

how much is too much

I like putting my keywords/phrases as the page name.

But is it too long ?

  • 6 Contributors
  • 5 Replies
  • 93 Views
  • 5 Days Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by canadafred

Dani AI

Generated

Brief answer: there is no strict character limit that will get a page penalized, but keep URLs short, readable, and stable so humans and search engines can understand and share them.

Building on points raised by , , , , and : aim for a concise final slug (roughly 3–5 meaningful words or about 50–60 characters where practical) and a shallow path (few segments). That helps click-throughs, social sharing, and avoids excessive truncation in interfaces. Put the most important term near the start of the path, but do not assemble long, repetitive keyword lists — clarity beats stuffing.

Operational checklist:

  • Treat any URL change as a move: deploy a single-step 301 from old to new, update internal links and the XML sitemap, and submit the updated URL in Search Console.
  • Use a canonical link to resolve duplicates and to tell search engines which version you prefer.
  • Keep separators and case usage consistent across the site so links do not create accidental duplicates.
  • Avoid long query strings or deeply nested IDs for public-facing URLs; keep machine IDs internal when possible.

Quick troubleshooting:

  • If a renamed page disappears from results, check the HTTP status (example: run curl -I https://example.com/your-path), look for redirect chains, confirm the page returns 200, ensure it is not blocked by robots.txt or meta noindex, and re-submit via Search Console URL Inspection.
  • Watch coverage and crawl reports for errors after changes.

For official guidance on readable URLs and handling URL changes, see Google Search Central on URL structure and site moves:
URL structure guidelines

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

Member Avatar for Dani

If it is obvious that you are trying to keyword stuff your page names, then it's too long.

Member Avatar for stymiee

A lot of blogs and CMSes have lengthy keyword stuffed URLs and seem to do okay. But you do run the risk of reaching the cutoff point for URLs and having indexing problems or lost keywords. Try to keep it short by removing words with less then four letters.

Member Avatar for BamaStangGuy

4 letter cut off is a good rule of thumb. Search for a general list of "stop words" and that will give you an idea of what not to include

Member Avatar for MattEvans

descriptive urls are beneficial for more than just SEO... it's quite common to use PHP or otherwise to serve up pages by an ID... personally, I don't like that.

methinks a good folder hierachy is something to aim for... if each folder has a short, meaningful name, it means you can give someone an URL to a page deep in your hierachy that describes itself.

A bit of subdomain-ing and request-level URL rewriting doesn't go too badly either... as long as you do it consistantly...

My site has a number of forums, each one's on it's own subdomain, each group is a folder, each board is a folder of each group, each topic is a folder of each board, (and in actual fact each reply is a folder in each topic, but that's never seen)... that kind of organisation is necessary for my processing system; and each folder is named automatically... so for example:

(not-telling).net/help/tos/advertising/

means "in the home forum, in the tos (terms of service) board of the help group... is a topic about advertising."

medon't think that's too much information in an URL, and medont think URLs are that important to search engines... the word "Google" didn't mean anything, (especially not anything about search engines); until someone put it in the oxford dictionary.... But nonetheless, Google comes in at number 2 (of unpaid links) in a Google search for "search engine"...

Amusingly, number 1 is MSN search :lol:

Member Avatar for canadafred

this_page_name_is_very_long_or_is_it.htm

use-hyphens-instead-of-underscores.aok
:)

Edited by Dani because: Fixed formatting
Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.