URL Structure / Length Question

artizhay said:

It really depends on what you're looking to improve by shorter URLs. You said your "system," but your current URLs work fine with your existing system, whatever it is.

The URL in its long form since the formatting cut it off in your post:

Code:

http://www.someautodealer.com/vehicle-details/67158a105c566a46881200e20c47d37c/2000+buick+lesabre+limited+4-door+sedan.html

As far as your system and the logistics of loading the vehicle, this is absolutely fine. I imagine your .htaccess is set up to look for the "67158a105c566a46881200e20c47d37c" value after "vehicle-details," and I imagine that long string is the unique hash that identifies it within the database. Then the "2000+buick+lesabre+limited+4-door+sedan.html" is just there for SEO/user-friendliness purposes.

So by your diction of "system," if it works as intended, there is nothing inherently wrong with the "system." Otherwise, you need to specify what you mean by system. Do you think the database structure and using a 128-bit vehicle hash is inefficient? Do you think your current system is slow? Do you have any technical reasons as to why the URL is not good?

You initially said "system," but then said it doesn't look good "to your eyes." So are you going for aesthetics, system efficiency, SEO improvement, or what? I don't know what you told your developer, but if you randomly came to me from a development standpoint and told me that the URLs where no good "for the system," I would tell you the URLs work perfectly fine from a development standpoint.

If you want to improve them from a UX/SEO standpoint, this may not be something you should be consulting with your developer on. There are a few of us who have a grasp on everything, but most developers merely program what they're told to do. If the system works and you tell the developer it doesn't, he's going to tell you you're crazy. Simple as that.

But if you want SEO-friendly URLs, then I can see your perspective. A URL like this may be better:

Code:

http://www.someautodealer.com/2000-buick-lesabre-limited-4-door-sedan-v39.html

The keywords are closer to the root of the URL, the plus signs are removed, and the vehicle identification is reduced to "39" instead of "67158a105c566a46881200e20c47d37c." If your developer is not also well-versed in SEO/UX, he would not understand your perspective, so it is a moot point in arguing with him. Note that you have to also understand the implications of your request. To simply change that URL, you have to pay your SEO guy to find a suitable replacement structure that will best benefit keyword placement and density then you have to pay your development guy to not only change how your system recognizes the URL but also to restructure the entire database to change the hash structure from a 128-bit hash to a dynamic integer identification key.

You really need to clarify what your goals are in changing the URL rather than just saying it's better for the system, because then you're telling a developer that his system doesn't work when he knows he knows more about the system than you do. I also can promise you that no developer is going to appreciate you randomly throwing articles at them, because he knows damn well that you went online and found those and now consider yourself a self-proclaimed expert in the field, which then minimizes and insults his years of experience over you in the field.

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www.mastroautogroup.com/2009-BMW-335i-Sanford-Florida/4852879

elcappy said:

I should have probably explained a little better how it went.

By system I really mean just our software that the company has built for car dealers.

Of course I know these vehicles have a unique identifier.....across all of our dealers which is that long string of characters after /vehicle-details/. I asked if it was encrypted, he said no. Anyway, we came to him from an SEO standpoint and told him that these needed to be changed for an SEO purpose. I told him it has been speculated/trialed/tested and found that URL's that have the KW's closer to the root of the domain will give us another plus when it comes to everything we're doing overall for SEO. Well in order to get him to possibly change how the URL structure works, he requested that I show him some 'proof' which I don't think there is any solid 'proof' out there that the shorter/SEO friendly URL will help.

Another thing that doesn't help is that we've gotten a few tips from customers stating that our competitors point them to our site and tell them that those long URL's won't help with their SEO. Sure we can teach these people that that is not necessarily the case, but how many of these possible customers are we losing that we'll never get to talk to right?

If this post doesn't make sense again, sorry I'm just about ready to head to bed.

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• restructure the database table that stores the essential vehicle information
• restructure all additional tables that references this vehicle hash
• rewrite the code that creates these unique hashes
• rewrite the code that references vehicle information
• rewrite the code that generates URLs for use around the site
• change the way the server itself handles these URLs

nastybasti said:

Are you a new or pre-owned dealership?
What DMS are you using?
What website service are you using?

I have extensive experience with auto dealerships + software.
Most likely changing the url structure will not be allowed.
Few providers allow you to do this, but unless if you are willing to pay big bucks for your website then you are probably out of luck.

I think you are over thinking it anyways. The SEO value in a URL is not that big of a deal, specially in a saturated market like automotive. You can better invest your time in marketing your vehicles on 3rd party sites, or trying to get your customers to repeat buy or referr.

At the end of the day its 100% possible, but is it worth it?
a. Is it worth your vendor to modify their system (perhaps introduce bugs) to allow flexibility in url structure. Might be a good feature request, but probably not as high priority as other features.

b. You could setup a NGINX, SQUID, or IIS ARR reverse proxy in front of the site they have created for you. So when a visitor wants to go to your site, they visit your web server, your webserver could easily rewrite the urls, and pull the actual content from the backend server (the current one that your provider builds). It would probably take a developer anywhere from 2 - 7 days to write and test all the URL rules + install the reverse proxy. You would probably have to pay for virtual hosting for the reverse proxy which would cost you $15 - $25 per month.

My Advice,
Forget about the SEO URL for the vehicle listings, and instead try to market your dealership actievely.

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