How important is it to include the target keyword phrase in the page URL?
-
If I want to target a keyword phrase to a particular phrase, but do not want to change the URL of that page, will that negatively impact my rankings?
I am also wondering if I can get around it by creating a new, short URL that 301 redirects to the original URL. Would that be as effective as including the keyword in the original URL?
-
If I want to target a keyword phrase to a particular phrase, but do not want to change the URL of that page, will that negatively impact my rankings?
A better way to say it is you are missing an opportunity to make a change which can positively impact your rankings.
A page's URL has a very minor effect on rankings. There are two larger secondary effects. First, if you offer a clear, relevant URL your click-through-rate may increase. Additionally, when others link to your page by copying and pasting the URL, you will naturally have good anchor text which is very helpful, especially in our post-penguin world.
Stefan correct shared there is not a reason to create a new short URL.
-
Totally agree with Stefan on this point.
Although, why are you so keen to keep the original URL? Already built a lot of links to it? Is it a homepage?
-
It wouldn't help you to create a new short url unless you redirect the old url to the new. Depending on the competition you can still rank good with a url that doesn't contain the keyword/phrase.
From a user experience it's of course much better with the keyword/phrase in the url. People see what your page is about just by studying the url.
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
-
Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?
I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword
On-Page Optimization | | GOMO-Gabriel0 -
Is the URL Matching the Page Title Important?
Hello I have tried searching for an answer on this but I can't get a clear answer due to the results when searching for URL title. I have just launched our second Shopify site for one of our brands. My first site launched in 2014 but when I launched I didn't pay much heed to SEO for page titles, URLs, etc so have retrospectively fixed this over time. For my Shopify site just launching I want to get it as right as possible from the start (learning from mistakes). My question is regarding URLs and what my approach should be for better SEO. So, I have a page with a Title of Newton Leather Wallets, Purses, Card Holders & Glasses Cases and the URL is https://www.tumbleandhide.com/collections/newton-leather-wallets-card-holders It was my understanding that I should try and make the URL reflect the Page Title more accurately. The problem is that this takes the character count to 77. On other pages it can be in the 80s. Will the above link be better for SEO than say just https://www.tumbleandhide.com/collections/newton I am just wary of the URL's being too long as my Moz Site Crawl is returning a lot of URLs that are too long. Thanks in Advance.
On-Page Optimization | | lukegj0 -
Toxic URL???
Hi I have a URL that produced page 1, number 1 to 3 for most of our industries top phrases. Then we received a google penalty, (as did several of our competitors on the same day). We were effectively wiped from google. After much disavowing we were allowed back into the search results, this took about 3 months. I have employed the services of a top London SEO company for over a year now and have seen no significant improvement. I believe they are doing there best, however there results are VERY poor. According to the various tools, (searchmetrics, woorank, semrush) to name but a few, our site scores very well, yet we are not getting the results. Page one seems to be full of totally new websites, most of which I have never heard of, and have appeared from nowhere. Should I scrap our URL and put up a completely new one, and put a redirect from the original one? This would be a biggy since our url has been around for 20 years. Thanks for reading. Andy
On-Page Optimization | | First-VehicleLeasing0 -
View all Page for Product Overview Pages
Hi everybody! We have an ecommerce site with product overview pages, where sometimes there are hundreds of products listed. Usually, we just display 30 and have a button where users can click to see 30 more - or all products listed at once. This is the overview page (as indexed in google): http://www.geschenkidee.ch/aussergewoehnliches.html
On-Page Optimization | | zeepartner
And this is the view-all page: http://www.geschenkidee.ch/aussergewoehnliches.html#all What should I do here? The product overview page will hardly generate more traffic by listing all products (because the overview page will rank for generic keywords, while the product keyword searches will be referred to the specific product pages themselves). I was originally thinking of using rel=canonical pointing to the view-all page. But this would just lead to longer load time. Should we just leave those overview pages or is there a best practice for how to deal with such pages? Thanks for your thoughts on this!0 -
Autogenerated pages
My main product is database conversion software. As it supports tons of databases, it's fairly easy to generate thousands of landing pages simply by variating source/target database names, connection information etc. In fact, I autogenerated almost 25k pages that way. As I didn't want to jeopardize my main site, I placed all that content to a new microsite (www.fullconvert.com) which had no history and no inbound links. Results were nice - site is live two months and in second month already had 1300 visitors. Now, my question is - should I create the same thing on my (old and rather authoritative) main site www.spectralcore.com? I could use a different template to avoid duplicate content. Of course, my main concern is being penalized by Google. In my opinion, this autogenerated content is fine because it provides (tons of) laser-focused landing pages, so visitors will instantly recognize they found what they're looking for. But Google might disagree! What do you think? Is there a danger in trying to leverage authority of my main site in adding 20k+ autogenerated pages with inbound no links to them?
On-Page Optimization | | metadata0 -
Question about URLs
Hello! I have a client that wants to upload an URL like this: www.example.com/keyword/page-name.html The main problem is that www.example.com/keyword/ doesn't exist and gives a 404 error so I'd prefer not doing that...... What do you think about this? And if the client wants to go ahead, is there any solution? A 301 to the final page would help? Thank you in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | Juandbbam0 -
Page Analyzer & Page 1
I follow the recommended things from the Page Analyzer or Grader, and I am like position #40, so how do I get to page #1 as a minimum.
On-Page Optimization | | sansonj0 -
What is important for page rank?
I have heard quality is the most important factor for page rank but after the 7 Nov 11 PR update I am no longer a believer. The PR on my home page dropped from 4 to 3 and the rest of my inside pages remained the same even though I have added a significant amount of content since the previous update and kept it fresh. Any thoughts on this most recent PR update?
On-Page Optimization | | casper4340