Long Page URLs

[Mike]

Hi all,

I know what everyone thinks about site URL's with five or six words seperated by dashes, but what about page URL's?

For example. site.com/folder/a-long-article-about-widgets-is-around-here-somewhere.php

Seen as spam by the search engines? Is it better to use the ID of the article?

Thanks,
Mike

[Chris]

Meaningful URLs are better... and wordpress goes this far without a seeming problem... however if you have the option, make it smaller. 2, 3 words tops. Like I do on this site.

[Mike]

Well the majority will be 4-5 words long, so it should look alright. My only concern is that there will be some pages that have about 10 words, which could look a bit spammy.

What do you think to that? There shouldn't be any penalties or anything with URLs that long should there?

[Chris]

Not penalties perse, but it does end up looking spammer to users and could result in lower SERP CTRs.

[Mike]

As most of them will only be a few words, I think I'll go for it. Like you say I'd preferably I'd like to go for just some of the words like you said, but for the site I'm doing this for it won't be possible.

Thanks for your info anyways...