Many marketers are used to using numbers contained in the title in URLs, but from a keyword or search perspective, the numbers have no real value. Avoid using numbers in article URLs, and this article will tell you why.
Linkbait's posts aren't as popular these days as they used to be. The Ten Commandments of Moses sparked a craze for the "Top Ten Rankings". Rolling Stone magazine has released its top 500 albums, and AFI updates its "Top 100 Movies of the Century" series every year. However, as a responsible publisher, marketer, and SEO person, you can judge content that has long-term value. You have greater responsibilities and better, reliable, long-termurl titleOption instead of using numbers in URL titles.
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Take a look at the following examples:
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Top 10 places to visit in Las Vegas
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15 Free things to do in Las Vegas
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20 Most Romantic Spots in Las Vegas
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7 Best Celebrity Chef Restaurants in Las Vegas
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In the "Top Ten Rankings", there will be someKey words. In these cases, the numbers are editorial headline components used to attract users to the site from social channels. They have little value from a keyword or search perspective. In most cases, however, blogging software and content management systems usually add numbers to URLs automatically unless you strip them off manually. From this, you will get the following URL:
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Top 10 places to visit in Las Vegas – domain /top-10-places-visit-las-vegas/
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15 Free things to do in Las Vegas – domain /15-free-things-to-do-las-vegas/
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20 Most Romantic Spots in Las Vegas – domain /20-most-romantic-spots-las-vegas/
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7 Best Celebrity Chef Restaurants in Las Vegas – domain /7-best-celebrity-chef-restaurants-las-vegas/
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While you may write these articles out of a judgment that they have long-term value, such articles also need to be updated. Case in point: Five years from now, Las Vegas will have 12 celebrity restaurants on the list. If you follow the current way of naming URLs, then you might end up posting with a URL title with the number 7 that actually has 12 lists.
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Mismatched numbers on the search results page
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However, this is not a catastrophic outcome, nor does it require everyone to be ready. This situation is just not ideal. You can use 301 redirects, but in doing so, you run the risk of modifying what is working and Google possibly re-ranking your page. If you take the extra 30 seconds to change the URL title before posting, you can save yourself the hassle. The following examples are URL titles without numbers, which the editor believes are extremely useful:
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Top 10 places to visit in Las Vegas – domain /top-places-visit-las-vegas/
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15 Free things to do in Las Vegas – domain /free-things-to-do-las-vegas/
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20 Most Romantic Spots in Las Vegas – domain /most-romantic-spots-las-vegas/
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7 Best Celebrity Chef Restaurants in Las Vegas – domain /best-celebrity-chef-restaurants-las-vegas/
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The focus of this article:
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When writing a "Top Ten Ranking" or other numbered list article, remove the number from the URL title or permalink title.
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Try to generate a URL format that holds value over time.
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If you decide to update the content after a content review, it's best to leave the URL title unchanged (unless it's really, really bad).