Neil Cheesman: Maybe a CMS issue... has it always been like it?
Nimie Gill: I don`t know they just contacted me to do some work and I am having a first look. Sad thing is the company that built the site and is doing their work currently is a self proclaimed SEO expert and has been charging them big time each month.
Neil Cheesman: My gut feeling (and I don`t have experience of this) is that this is a CMS `issue` - the urls are indexed like it... all the fixed navigation links are like it...
Neil Cheesman: Maybe someone with more experience will comment - but above is my opinion for what it is worth - be interesting to know what the CMS is?
Nimie Gill: So if you inspect — source that number is on the folder
Nimie Gill: It is built with the CMS of the company that created the website and I checked some others that all have the same url layout.
Chris Boggs: my thought is "no" it shouldn`t hurt given other stuff like canonical to that version if others exist, etc. there are very prevalent sites ranking for competitive industry terms with dozens/hundreds of similar urls as your example. You can argue that rewriting them to be more keyword rich could lead to some help for SEO, but it certainly isn`t priority 1 material IMO.
Nimie Gill: Ok thanks Chris Boggs. Just struck me odd, just like the home page having home page in the url. Just makes you look twice.
Jim Munro: I agree with Chris Boggs, leaving the number will not negatively affect SEO in any way whatsoever.
Michael Stricker: Agreed. Doesn’t hurt indexation or rank. Doesn’t help, either. Save any changes in URL architecture for a future site restructuring, or a move to a new CMS. Work those other signals : )
Nimie Gill: Michael Stricker agreed. Have no way of changing as host has complete control of cms, but building a case for client to move away from this company.
Linda Caplinger: Yeah I hear what Jim is saying but I`d still change it. In cases where your url shows up in the organic search results, is it more informative to the user to see a number or to see some sort of indication as to what your content is about. I realize the title tags suffice here, but why throw away a perfectly good signal to a potential customer if you have it? I definitely think it could affect click rates and you know where that goes.
I have a website in which all the pages end in a long number for example mydomain.com/gallery/4708267. Why is this and should I change it for SEO?
