During a hangout, one SEO professional asked John Mueller about URL length, and whether or not it is important for SEO.
John replied, saying that no, that the length of your URL is not important for SEO rankings.
John said he believes that it’s a good practice to have some of the words from your article title in the URL, so that it’s a more readable URL.
However, it’s not an SEO requirement that you must have actual words in your URL.
This happens at approximately the 4:51 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 2 4:51
Good. Good point. Another thing, is the length of the URL important because we used to put all the title and the URL and now we removed it. Is it..?
John 5:04
No, no difference at all. No difference.
SEO Professional 2 5:05
I will, my team will hate me for after that.
John 5:10
I mean, it’s good to ask these questions. I think it’s good practice to have some of the words in the URL, so it’s more like a readable URL. But it’s not a requirement from an SEO point of view.
SEO Professional 2 5:24
So if it’s only the ID to the article it’s good for Google?
John 5:27
That’s okay, too. Yeah. I mean, it I think it’s better to have some words in there. But it’s, it’s essentially fine. Like, for the most part, that’s something that just users see. And when they copy and paste the URL, they might see, oh, I know what this article is about, based on what I see here. Whereas if they just see the number, then they might pick the wrong one, or might not be sure about that. But that’s a user question, almost not an SEO question.
