SEO finding

The URL is long, deep or contains characters that cause trouble

SEO Info Severity: Low

Part of the audit URL format. Finding id: seo.urlFormat.

What it costs you

Usually little. Awkward URLs are harder to share and to read in search results.

What to do

Fix the URL pattern in the template or the routing, not page by page, and redirect the old addresses. Do not change URLs that rank well for a cosmetic gain.

What it checks

URL too long
URL contains capital letters
URL contains underscores
URL contains special characters
URL contains spaces
URL contains a session ID
URL has too many parameters
URL has too many folder levels
Inconsistent slash at end of URL

How to fix it

Keep the session out of the URL

Find the setting of the application or framework that falls back to a session id in the URL when cookies are refused, and turn it off.
Search the templates for links that add the session parameter by hand and remove it.
Redirect addresses that carry the parameter to the same address without it.

How to check: Open the site with cookies switched off: links carry no session id. Recrawl and run this rule again.

Choose one form and redirect the other

Choose the form most internal links already use.
Redirect the other form to it with a 301, at the server or the CDN. We do not name the setting, because it differs per server.
Make the canonical tag and the sitemap use the chosen form, and change internal links that use the other.

How to check: curl -sI on the other form answers 301 with a Location that names the chosen form.

Change the pattern and redirect the old URLs

Group the URLs found by template_id: one pattern usually produces all of them.
For new pages use lower case words separated by hyphens.
When you change an existing URL, redirect the old address to the new one with a 301 and update internal links.

How to check: Recrawl the site and run this rule again.

Thresholds

Thresholds for The URL is long, deep or contains characters that cause trouble
Name	Default	Meaning
`max_url_length`	120	URLs with more characters than this are reported as too long.
`max_parameters`	3	URLs with more query parameters than this are reported.
`max_folder_depth`	5	URLs with more folders in the path than this are reported. This is the depth of the path, not the number of clicks from the home page.