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
-
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 -
Microsoft SEO Toolkit vs MoZ
Hi MoZ Community, Does anybody know how well is Microsoft SEO Toolkit. As far i have noticed this tool reports around 20 violations under three broad areas like : SEO, Content and Performance. On many violations I have found MoZ to be silent like : 1-unnecessary redirects 2-Invalid mark ups 3-Missing Tag 4-like vilations and others Important is that it tells solutions as well against each violation on how to fix that. Any body can give insights while comparing it with MoZ. Tanveer
On-Page Optimization | | Sequelmed0 -
Is a resource page bad for SEO
This is the page http://www.christoit.com/free-resources/articles. While this page isn't what I would consider to be a "resource page" (there are no downloads or any other resources) The question is, does a page like this that just has links to articles, hurt the overall ranking of the site. If you have any examples to support your opinion that would be great! Thanks so much for all awesome threads and answers on this site. There are some really smart people all in one place!
On-Page Optimization | | Britewave0 -
Wordpress & SEO Markup
Buon Giorno from 6 degrees C wetherby UK 🙂 I'm close to commissioning a designer to create a wordpress driven site but I'm anxious around the standard of the markup. Specifically I need pages to have the classic unique title tags, one H1 tag per page and contnet in p tags.
On-Page Optimization | | Nightwing
Now I know theres a wordpress plugin claiming to empower the administartor to have control but are there any icebergs ahead I need navigate to ensure my sites meets Google optimization guildlines? Any advice welcome 🙂1 -
Are tags important for SEO?
I just installed a plugin called SEO content control and it is telling me I need to write descriptions for my tags. I haven't been using tags although I did create a list of them. I don't have an endless amount of time on my hands so is this a worthwhile task?
On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger0 -
Does Changing Hosting Provider Affect SEO?
I am having a site with more than 1,500 visits per day and I have suffered from two "blackouts" of one day each with my actual hosting Provider. I would like to change the Hosting Provider, but I am afraid of losing lots of visitors if I do the change. The change will be to a dedicated IP and the location of the IP will be in the same country. Will my site be affected on SEO results as a consecuence of this change? Thanks and regards Maria
On-Page Optimization | | goperformancelabs0 -
Two different keywords - one URL
We're new to SEO, but have two keywords that are really not quite the same, but Google has targeted the same URL for us ... which means that SEO Moz is recommending we optimize the same URL, for opposite keywords (using the on page SEO). For example, the keywords (these aren't our keywords) of say, "beer brewing" and "ways to make beer for small breweries" are both pointing at our home page. The on page SEO is showing that "beer brewing" is a rank of say, a google ranking of 9. However, "ways to ..." is a google ranking of 47. So ... what am I supposed to do now? Do I rewrite the page to have "ways to ..." more prominent? I cannot really have the title and h1's include both ... What do I do now? We have about 3 or 4 of these "pairs". -- Anthony
On-Page Optimization | | apresley0 -
The URL Inside
Howdy SEO'ers, I have a quick question for the SEO gurus out there. When constructing "better" search friendly URLs would one of these be better than the other? Example 1: http://Domain.com/Category/Sub-Category/Product-name Example 2: http://Category.Domain.com/Sub-Category/Product-name In this example the category could be phones and the sub-category brands of phones. Is either one of these URLs "better" than the other in terms of ranking? Thanks! I'll hang-up and listen to your answer. 🙂 Jonathan
On-Page Optimization | | creativedepartment0