URL and SEO
-
How much weight do search engines give the URL? We're a medical call center provider and medicalcallcenter is part of our URL. Does that help us much?
Thanks!!
-
A competitor of mine has her name as the domain url and her keywords show on seomoz as "branded" and my same keywords show "Not branded"
Why is this?
-
Keith,
Thank you for this explanation. I was making it too hard and you just cleared it up for me.
Best,
Wendy
-
Hey Wendy,
I was just reading an article on exact match domains and thought it might be of use to you http://www.seomoz.org/blog/are-exact-match-domains-in-decline
-
A branded root domain = google.com, nike.com , apple.com etc any domain that uses a brand name and not a dictionary keyword's like "cheap-cars.com" or "cheapcars.com".
SEO's define a root domain as the domain name on it's own with no sub domain etc so google.com not www.google.com
-
Dear Davinia,
I am unclear on what branded root domain means. We use our name as branded keywords, but I assume that is not the same as branded root domain.
Thanks.
-
Hey Keith,
I did the same search and the keyword in the URL was not bold. Agreed don't use hyphens in the root domain (I do believe they help in folder paths), but anyway I feel that you and I could go on forever having a fun debate but I think we have made our points and from this Wendy will be able to make an informed decision, or at least our information has helped her to look in certain areas so she can do additional research.
Best regards,
Davinia -
Hey Davinia,
Check the screenshot attached, as you can see I searched for "medical call center" and in the first organic result it's parsed the domain for that keyword and made the keywords bold in the domain name.
Google's parse domains for for keywords, it's pretty basic stuff... You don't need to have a hypen (dash) in there as a delimiter any more (although this used to help years ago).
I was not simply suggesting building links to the home page will help (which it obviously will if done correctly), what I meant was there is little point building a page that as the same keywords as the domain and then building links to that page.
As the domain in question has the exact match keywords Wendy can use the home page to rank for those keywords without the need for an additional page targeting the keyword "medical call center".
Keith
-
The URLs don't have to be keyword heavy, they should be semantically in line with the content of the page and also be relevant, not only will this help as a ranking factor but it also allows for better authored search engine result page snippets (i.e. the keyword's will display in the URL on the SERP snippet), which in turn should help with click through rates.
A search engine isn't going to know that "medicalcallcenter" is "medical call center" so the URL doesn't include the keyword. Therefore adding the keywords to the file paths will get the keyword into the URL.
Agreed, building links to the homepage (and other important pages) would be a good idea.
-
If Wendy has a keyword heavy domain why not just build the links to the home page?! I would avoid repeating the keyword again in the URL if the domain already includes them...
I could understand this strategy if the domain was branded and did not include the target keywords, but that's not the case here.
Keith
-
I'd go for a branded root domain and when creating the file paths use keywords separated by hyphens, example:
www.medicalcallcenter.com
www.medicalcallcenter.com/medical-call-center
www.medicalcallcenter.com/healthcare-advice
www.medicalcallcenter.com/healthcare-advice/colds-flus -
The short answer is yes, google have reduced the weight of this (apparently) if i was picking a brand I would probably try to include a partial match for one of the head terms without it looking spammy if possible... (like SEOMoz.org).
Spammy keyword match domains (no1-cheap-car-insurance.com) don't look as pro a branded domain IMO.
Obviously this is only one ranking factor out of many...
Hope that helps,
Keith
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
-
SEO Content Development - Where do unicorns live?
A great web page (for organic search) needs more than great copy. Tons of articles tell us how important it is construct a web page. Others beat the drum of content, content, content. Who are these unicorns who understand on-page SEO and are great writers to boot? I'm imagining a "content developer", or I might call it a "technical SEO writer. Neither really captures the need. I don't need a copywriter to deliver some text, nor an SEO who can't write their way out of the paper sack. I need an "SEO content specialist" who can craft an on-page experience; someone who thinks about things like SERP features and understands the concepts of semantic content. The problem is that I have no idea how to find this person. "Content Marketing" is the buzz right now, but that's not it either. I'm not talking about a blogs and social media. I'm talking about building great, core web pages. Does anyone else have this challenge? How have you been successful? Where do unicorns live?
On-Page Optimization | | Jason-Rogers4 -
Product Tag Value on SEO
Do product tags for ecommerce sites have any benefit to SEO? Or are they redundant? i.e. thespacecollective.com/astronaut-moldavite-pendant (tags appear below the product name on the right)
On-Page Optimization | | moon-boots0 -
Lost SEO contract, new SEO wants us to do the following - can you explain why?
1. Make prokem.co.uk the master domain rather than prokem-corrosion-protection.com 2. Ensure each http URL is 301 redirected to its https counterpart via htaccess rather than in plesk 3. 301 redirect each www.prokem-corrosion-protection.com URL to its co.uk counterpart via htaccess. I can provide a list of pages to redirect as there are a number of duplicate pages that will need removing. It probably makes sense to implement these other changes at the same time: Remove all of the canonical tags currently on the site. Leverage browser caching by following Google’s page speed recommendations - https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/LeverageBrowserCaching Losslessly compress all of the website’s images. Combine and minify the website’s JavaScript
On-Page Optimization | | Simon_VO0 -
Removing old URLs from Google
We rebuilt a site about a year ago on a new platform however Google is still indexing URL's from the old site that we have no control over. We had hoped that time would have 'cleaned' these out but they are still being flagged in HTML improvements in GWT. Is there anything we can do to effect these 'external' dropping out of the indexing given that they are still being picked up after a year.
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0 -
Are sliding text SEO friendly?
Hi mozzers, I am wondering if sliding text SEO friendly such as this webpage: http://www.questexchange.org/?s=faq If it isn't is there a way to make it SEO Friendly? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art1 -
What are the best FREE Magento Extension for SEO?
I am launching an eCommerce website in magento, and there are some affiliate products are included. I am looking best and Free magento extension that allow me to add no-follow attribute to outgoing link with one click. Please do suggest Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Ganesh340 -
What impact does cdn utilization have on SEO?
I've set up a new online store and prepping to roll out. I've implemented Amazon Cloudfront to host all of my static files: images, style sheets, javascript files and small template related images to assist in speeding up this Magento site. Any reason not to do this? What are the SEO implications of having images that arent' stored on the same domain? Does it make a difference if I refer to these files from the amazon cloudfront domain vs. seting up a subdomain like cdn.mywebsite.com? Thanks for any feedback.
On-Page Optimization | | Timmmmy0 -
WordPress (.com) and SEO
I am in my 30 day trial and very interested in my results. I think I am probably in a small minority in having the same web site up and running for approaching 17 years (registered in January 1995 :)) but only now am I looking at SEO seriously (to the extent that I want to learn more myself, as opposed to having others promise great fortune!)). Anyway, before committing to SEOMoz on an ongoing basis I want to understand just how actionable the information on my dashboard is. With that in mind, here's the first of what is (hopefully) a series questions that about low-hanging fruit I might be able to check off quickly. I recently brought up a new blog on WordPress.com (note - hosted by WordPress, not a self-hosted implementation). I have had this blog running for less than a month and have just 18 posts. And I am being overwhelmed with thoudands of errors/warnings from SEOMoz. These fall into a few categories: Duplicate content: As I understand it, each TAG I associate with a single blog post creates a unique URL. For example, if I have a single post with tags for "flowers", "wine" and "cakes", I get URLs generated such as <blog url="">/flowers, <blog url="">/wines and <blog url="">/cakes. Obviously, tagging posts is a common scenario. Must I just accept these duplicate content warnings?</blog></blog></blog> Title element too long: These are self generated by WordPress.com and the default format includes the date the post was submitted (which takes a bunch of characters followed by the title used). Many of the posts are well over 70 and this seems really easy to do. Missing meta-description: As far as I can tell, Wordpress.com doesn't give me an option to specify these. So, must I just accept these issues if I use WordPress.com (which, again, seems like a very common scenario) and how negative is this to me? Thanks. Mark
On-Page Optimization | | MarkWill0