: Should my canonical URLs have only the ID with no slug so that they don't change? Our URLs will be created by the user's content. Eg: www.example.com/bar-1234/i-went-to-baz-4321 The "i went

@Cody1181609

Posted in: #RelCanonical #Seo

Our URLs will be created by the user's content. Eg:
example.com/bar-1234/i-went-to-baz-4321
The "i went to baz" portion is user generated, included with the aim of being helpful to the person viewing the URL and also to possibly contain useful keywords for search engines.

However, the string that forms that portion is user editable. So it could become:
example.com/bar-1234/we-drove-to-baz-4321
AFAICT the canonical URL should be:
example.com/bar-1234/4321
The string portion is discarded by the controller, which means that there's potential for duplicate content from limitless URLs!

So, my question is, does it matter if my canonical URL is 'non SEO friendly'? It seems logical to me to provide search engines with the "id only" version of the URL which is always consistent, but the canonical URL is the one that appears in search results, so is there any benefit from trying to use more 'SEO friendly' URLs?

Vote Up Vote Down

Login to post a comment!