Does a page's url have any weight in Google rankings?
-
I'm sure this question must have been asked before but I can't find it.
I'm assuming that the title tag is far more important than the page's url. Is that correct? Does the url have any relevance to Google?
-
both are important for SEO - the filename in the URL should match up with your title tag. all filenames should be unique. for example
www.coolsite.com/kids-toys/blue-schwinn-bike
not
www.coolsite.com/kids-toys/blue-schwinn-bike/index.php
this latter example would cause you to wind up with Google seeing every page with the same filename index.php
-
both are important for SEO - the filename in the URL should match up with your title tag. all filenames should be unique. for example
www.coolsite.com/kids-toys/blue-schwinn-bike
not
www.coolsite.com/kids-toys/blue-schwinn-bike/index.php
this latter example would cause you to wind up with Google seeing every page with the same filename index.php
-
Thanks for your help Wayne.
Best,
Richard
-
Thanks, Rachel. That's what I thought, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to check with some Pros.
Best,
Richard -
Richard, here is a document I would check out: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls. It's from the man (Rand) himself and much of what is stated holds true today.
-
Your URL example is fine, it's the gobble-de-gook URLs that are a problem
-
Thanks Wayne,
I'm okay with our domain name, but the urls of some of our pages have long navigation paths (e.g. http://www.lifeinsure.com/education-center/life-insurance-videos/how-much-life-insurance-should-i-have). A lot of our pages have urls like this.
Do you see any problem with a url this long and does Google put more weight on the title tag than on the url?
Best,
R
-
Hi Richard,
The short answer is, yes, domain names and URL structure are certainly key to positive ranking for particular keywords. Some would argue that domain names carry too much weight (I personally think so!), but it's a fact, so be careful when picking your domain name and also be sure you are properly formatting your URLs.
If you have specific questions regarding either, I'm happy to try and help.
Best,
W
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does no-follow for pages affect site ranking?
Hey, I have a question. On my site, it's divided into the main site and the blog is in a subfolder of same domain. Within the main site (same domain), there are MANY checkout pages and other internal pages we use though all with "NO FOLLOW" on each. Despite it having "NO FOLLOW", will it affect our blog rankings in any way or domain ranking?"
On-Page Optimization | | Mirian0 -
Single Page on my client's website is not crawling and indexing new changes. What could be the possible reason?
I made several changes on client's website on different pages, changed titles, add content on few pages, moved blog from subdomain to sub directory. Everything is crawled but there is one page on the website (not part of the blog) that isn't getting crawled in Google and picking up changes. The last crawl of the website is 2 days back whereas that page was last crawled on 30th sep. I just wanted to know the possible reasons and has anyone encountered this before?
On-Page Optimization | | MoosaHemani0 -
Schema and Rich Snippets What's the difference?
Sorry if this is a daft question but... what is the difference between Rich snippets and Schema markup? Are they one and the same? They seem to be used interchaneably and I'm confused. If someone could give a brief sentence or two about the differences between them that would be great. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | AL123al1 -
Splash page - is it possible to rank well?
Hi there, I have a website with splash page - http://veda4.com/ . It's trully cool looking, the owner of our company wants the home page to be this way. But is it ok from SEO viewpoint? Can it rank well for keywords. All my SEO strategy were not using splash pages and I am not sure what should I change so it work with splash page also. I myself won't choose splash page but my boss trully liked it.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
Exstinguishing Page Rank?
Hi Guys, Here is a thought. Google gives more weight to links in content, less to navigation etc.. Therefore if they say give 50% of a pages rank to a link within content and 50% to the the other elements. What happens to the total pagerank from a page if you have not utilized in page content links? (is it lost) If this is the case, and you have a site that does not use content links on every page, are you loosing value (and hard earned) pagerank. Google did mention sometime back about pagerank being exstinguished with the nofollow tag. I would be interested to hear what others think? Cheers Scott
On-Page Optimization | | Jurnii0 -
Custom Landing Page URLs
I will begin creating custom landing pages optimized for long-tail keywords. Placing the keywords in the URL is obviously important -- Question: would it be detrimental to rankings to have extra characters extending past the keyword? I'm not able to use tracking code, but need to put an identifier in the URL (clp = custom landing page). For example, is "www.domain.com/silver-fish.html" going to perform meaningfully better than "www.domain.com/silver-fish-clp.html" for the kw phrase "silver fish"? There will obviously be a lot of on-page optimization in addition to just structuring the URLs. Thank you. SIMbiz
On-Page Optimization | | SIMbiz0 -
Google SERPS showing wrong page.
I am new to SEO and trying to rank for keyword 'corporate entertainment' and my site is currently at 26. However google is showing the homepage http://www.musicliveuk.com in SERPS as opposed to my optomised page http://www.musicliveuk.com/home/corporate-entertainment. Any ideas why it is choosing so show the home page as the most relevant result?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Are duplicate titles an issue for pages I don't need ranking for?
A client has a load of duplicate page titles on their site. However, to cut a long story short, most of these pages are pointless and therefore we don't need ranking for them. As such, I'm not concerned whether any of the pages with duplicate content on them are ranked or not..... unless having duplicate page titles / content on these pages could mean that other pages on the site, like the homepage, don't rank as high because of this. Do I need to worry about duplicate titles on these pages, or can I ignore duplicate content on pages that I don't want to be ranked? Hope that makes sense!
On-Page Optimization | | RiceMedia0