Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should we use brand name of product in URL
-
Hi all,
What is best for SEO. We sell products online. Is it good to mention the brand in the product detail page URL key if (part of) the brand is also in the home url?
So our URL is: www.brandXstore.com
Is it best to do: www.brandXstore.com/brandX-productA.html
of just do: www.brandXstore.com/ProductA.html
Thanks for quick answering

-
Agree with Brady & Adam on this one. Each great responses.
I'll just add that, for the most part, the URL should be for the user first and then the search engine. A lot of times brands have funk looking URLs that have numbers and symbols in them - not user friendly. So, I'd recommend adding your descriptive keyword/producA/B/C into the URL if it'll help the user understand your product and navigate your site better

Hope this helps!
-
Inserting the brand name again in the product page portion of the URL is unnecessary and looks like a keyword stuffing technique. Assuming the brand you're representing gets a lot of search traffic, focusing on the power of your domain should be more than enough to attract visits to your site.
Focusing on users should be your main focus when designing URL structures. As a potential customer, repeating the brand name in the URL of pages would be unnecessary and unattractive. Thus, it will (probably) have the same effect on search engines. As Adam said, short and user-friendly is the way to go.
-
Hi Jeroen
I would look more into making sure the URLs are kept fairly short and friendly. I wouldn't expect a huge SEO impact from this, I would look more into the question "does including the brand name in the URL improve usability for my visitors?". Maybe you have several "ProductA" all by different brands? If this is the case then yes I would include the brand name in the URL.
If you are selling only BrandX products on your store and nothing else then I would not bother putting in the brand name as you are already including the brand in your main site URL. Having it twice could make the URL look at bit keyword stuffed.
Hope this helps.
Adam
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
-
Multiple sub-category of the same name ? does that effect SEO
Hello, If I have multiple sub-category of the same name ? does that affect SEO for example I have the following category structure? domain/bmw/series5/2006.html domain/bmw/series5/2007.html .. etc domain/bmw/series3/2007.html domain/bmw/series3/2006.html ..etc domain/Acura/cl/2006.html domain/Acura/cl/2007.html .. etc I do use canonical url because I may have the same product in multiple categories but my question does google penalize me because I have the same (year) url key for multiple categories even though I use canonical url ? do I have any advantage in masking them filters vs sub-category from SEO point of view ? specially my goal is to have different meta title and meta description for each sub category ?
Algorithm Updates | | LKCservicesINC0 -
Discontinued Products
We have a medium/large ecommerce site that imports manufacturer products every year (or when new products come in/out) We are trying to decide what to do with the discontinued product pages. As we are using shopify we do not have an option of custom404 error pages so we cannot use this. We also cannot do a 30 redirect with a custom message as to why they are being redirected so dont like that idea. What we were thinking of doing was leaving the page with its content and adding a message that the item has been discontinued and a few similar products listed below with an option of clicking on a link to go up a level to the category/subcategory of that products brand. My question is: Should we noindex/follow these pages when they go out of stock so search engines don't continue to index them. Should we add the tag: (we do not have advance warning so it would be at the time that we update the listing to say item is no longer available) My concern with doing the above and leaving it to be indexed is that google may regard these pages as soft 404 if the bounce rate gets very high - as users will not be staying very long on the page. Any advice would be very much appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | henya0 -
Google automatically adding company name to serp titles
Maybe I've been living under a rock, but I was surprised to see that Google had algorithmically modified my page titles in the search results by adding the company name to the end of the (short) title. <title>About Us</title> became About Us - Company Name Interestingly, this wasn't consistent - sometimes it was "company name Limited" and sometimes just "company name. Anyone else notice this or is this a recent change?
Algorithm Updates | | DougRoberts0 -
Does the use of an underscore in filenames adversely affect SEO
We have had a page which until recently was ranked first or second by Google UK and also worldwide for the term "Snowbee". It is now no longer in the top 50. I ran a page optimization report on the url and had a very good score. The only criticism was that I had used an atypical character in the url. The only unusual character was an underscore "_" We use the underscore in most file names without apparent problems with search engines. In fact they are automatically created in html files by our ecommerce software, and other pages do not seem to have been so adversely affected. Should we discontinue this practice? It will be difficult but I'm sure we can overcome this if this is the reason why Google has marked us down. I attach images of the SEO Report pages 8fDPi.jpg AdLIn.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | FFTCOUK0 -
Is using WPML (WordPress Multilingual Plugin) ok for On-Page SEO?
Hi Mozzers, I'm investigating multilingual site setup and translating content for a small website for 15-20 pages and came accross WPML (WordPress Multilingual Plugin) which looks like it could help, but I am curious as to whether it has any major international SEO limitations before trialing/buying. It seems to allow the option to automatically setup language folder structures as www.domain.com/it/ or www.domain.com/es/ etc which is great and seems to offer easy way of linking out to translators (for extra fee), which could be convenient. However what about the on-page optimization - url names, title tags and other onpage elements - I wonder if anyone has any experiences with using this plugin or any alternatives for it. Hoping for your valued advice!
Algorithm Updates | | emerald0 -
Plural vs non-plural domain name
I'm sure this question has been answered and asked a 1,000 different ways but what would be the best domain name to use in the long term (2 years +)? The plural versions (examples.com) which has a decent domain authority and is ranking 1st in Google search results yet has less search volume or the singular version (example.com) that has no current SEO value for the search term that we'd like to target however the singular version of the keyword has a much higher search volume? so basically will it be better to have the exact match that has more volume or the plural form that has better rankings after 2 years of doing SEO for each domain? My guess is that using (examples.com) with the better domain authority and tightening the grip on its dominance in Google will still be more effective than having the exact match domain with more search volume for that keyword while performing the same amount of SEO even after two years. Any suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | ydop0 -
To use the same content just changing the keywords could be seen as duplicate content?
I want to offer the same service or product in many different cities, so instead of creating a new content for each city what I want to do it to copy the content already created for the product and service of a city and then change the name of the city and create a new url inside my website for each city. for example let say I sell handmade rings in the USA, but I want o target each principal city in the USA, so I have want to have a unque url for ecxh city so for example for Miami I want to have www.mydomain.com/handmade-rings-miami and for LA the url would be www.mydomain.com/handmade-rings-la Can I have the same content talking about the handmade rings and just change the keywords and key phrases? or this will count as a duplicate content? content: TITLE: Miami Handmade Rings URL :www.mydomain.com/handmade-rings-miami Shop Now handmade rings in Miami in our online store and get a special discount in Miami purchases over $50 and also get free shipping on Miami Local address... See what our Miami handmade rings clients say about our products.... TITLE: LA Handmade Rings URL: www.mydomain.com/handmade-rings-la Shop Now handmade rings in LA in our online store and get a special discount in LA purchases over $50 and also get free shipping on LA Local address... See what our LA handmade rings clients say about our products.... There are more than 100 location in the country I want to do this, so that is why I want to copy paste and replace.. Thanks in advance, David Orion
Algorithm Updates | | sellonline1230