Some SEO 2016 questions
-
Hello MOZ Community,
I have some questions where the following is still working for seo in 2016:
- Is an exact keyword in the domain still a good start?
- If a domain contains the most important keyword does one still need subfolders with that keyword in the url?
- Do you need multiple subpages so the main url becomes stronger?
- Is linkbuilding still the number one factor?
Thank you for your thoughts!
-
Thank you.
These are some good answers for me.
I will focus on brand building and kickass content!
-
All of these questions will draw different opinions from different people.
Sometimes contrary opinion is most valuable.
Is an exact keyword in the domain still a good start?
If you mean... EgolsWidgets.com... then, widgets in your domain name isn't worth much. But if you have a site about brass widgets with BrassWidgets.com as the domain... then the domain will be slightly helpful. Exact match is what you need. Partial match is worth little to nothing.
If a domain contains the most important keyword does one still need subfolders with that keyword in the url?
If this is worth anything at all, it is not worth much. If I own BrassWidgets.com, I am not going to have a folder named /brass-widgets/
Do you need multiple subpages so the main url becomes stronger?
Huh? If you want a good website you will probably need a lot of subpages. That is called "content".
Is linkbuilding still the number one factor?
No. KICKASS content is the number one factor. "Content" isn't worth much at all unless it is KICKASS. If you make a website with crappy content then who is going to link to it, who is going to read it, who is going to do anything with it.
If you don't have kickass content then you will be forced to pay a linkbuilder and he will have to perform some type of sin to get people to links to your crappy website.
-
Thank you for responding.
I was trying to get some "almost" exact keyword matches combined with lots of weak backlinks to rank for some affiliate marketing sites, but it does nothing.
And your answers clearly show why.
Thanks again.
-
Thank you for responding and your helpfull answers.
It really seems that shortcuts are not helping and brand building is the way to go.
-
Hi mhenze,
Will answer to the best of my ability:
- Exact match still a good start?
It depends on what the brand of the website/business you're working on is. This one was answered well in Q&A in December of 2015 with the following:
"If your "brand" is going to be "Region Family Holidays" then an EMD is fine. Just make sure you're branded that way, and try to cultivate a variety of natural backlinks. If your brand is "Acme Travel UK" and the site is regionfamilyholidays.co.uk then you'll be fighting a losing battle."
Here's the link: https://moz.com/community/q/exact-match-domain-should-i-use-one
Long story short, the value of EMD's lessens as your brand diverges from the keywords you're targeting. If you are branding based on keywords you're targeting, then you're still in good shape.
-
Kind of related to the first question - it depends on what your brand is. I would stay away from the EMD/keywords discussion and just focus on producing solid content targeting keywords. It's the safest way to go and it gets results in my experience. It's a small piece of the pie compared to your link profile and properly optimized content/site structure.
-
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking here. Subpages don't really add strength to the main URL (in fact, it works in reverse). Subpages are great for ranking additional keywords or if you have multiple products or services that are not related to one another and you want to keep your services separated for SEO purposes. Your main URL will be strong if you can generate sufficient links and provide excellent resources to your visitors.
-
According to Moz's 2015 Search Engine Ranking Factors Survey, links are still the #1 factor when it comes to rankings.
Link is here: https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
Granted this survey was based on 2015 factors and your question revolves around 2016, but the factors have not changed significantly in this time and it is doubtful there will be anything game-changing in 2016 (at least not for a few months).
This doesn't mean links are the be-all and end-all of rankings, but many very smart people seem to think they are still a big factor. Make sure you are following best practices, make sure your link profile is natural and whatever you do, don't spam or buy links for your sites and you should do just fine.
-
Greetings. I'll start this one off!
First and foremost, I have to point you to the 2015 Ranking Factors. They haven't change that much and it is really the best reference out there for all of these questions.
1. I say yes with a giant BUT...you have balance branding with that nifty keyword domain name. My personal experience is not all is lost on keywords in the domain as some will tell you, but I'd only do it IF there is no significant loss to your brand.
2. Keep the URL as short as possible.
3. Not sure what you mean here. A well structured website with quality content will give you the best results, so I'm leaning towards yes on this one.
4. Short answer is Yes. That and great content. See the 2015 Ranking Factors.
Good luck.
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
-
Website analysis for SEO
Hi, We have been trying to gain ranking for 7 keywords for a year now but have been unsuccessful We are not sure where we are going wrong, if someone could please help us out, we are happy to pay for your time.
Technical SEO | | mframing0 -
Duplicate Content Question
I have a client that operates a local service-based business. They are thinking of expanding that business to another geographic area (a drive several hours away in an affluent summer vacation area). The name of the existing business contains the name of the city, so it would not be well-suited to market 'City X' business in 'City Y'. My initial thought was to (for the most part) 'duplicate' the existing site onto a new site (brand new root domain). Much of the content would be the exact same. We could re-word some things so there aren't entire lengthy paragraphs of identical info, but it seems pointless to completely reinvent the wheel. We'll get as creative as possible, but certain things just wouldn't change. This seems like the most pragmatic thing to do given their goals, but I'm worried about duplicate content. It doesn't feel as though this is spammy though, so I'm not sure if there's cause for concern.
Technical SEO | | stevefidelity0 -
Are sitewide links bad for SEO?
I have 11 real estate sites and have had links from one to another for about 7 years but someone just suggested me to take them all out because I might get penalized or affected by penguin. My main site was affected on July of 2012 and organic visits have dropped 43%...I've been working on many aspects of my SEO but it's been difficult to come back. Any suggestions are very welcome, thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | mbulox0 -
Pager + SEO - Is it possible?
Hi, I am having this issue. I know that pager are not friends with SEO, but I want to know which is the best to do in this situations. for example, I work in a news company, and I have a lot of news pages that are very extensive so I use a pager. Well here I have the problem. suppose that the url is www.mysite.com/news/id/here-comes-the-title When you enter that URL you are viewing the first page that has this meta: title keywords description Now, the problem comes when the user goes to the page 2 of this news article. What I shall do? 1- Change the url to www.mysite.com/news/id/here-comes-the-title-PAGE2 www.mysite.com/news/PAGE2-id/here-comes-the-title www.mysite.com/news/id/PAGE2/here-comes-the-title 2- in the page 2,3,4,5 ... add a meta robot noindex? In the option 2 I think that I am loosing the opportunity to index the body of my article. Is this correct? Thanks
Technical SEO | | informatica8100 -
Questions about root domain setup
Hi There, I'm a recent addition to SEOmoz and over the past few weeks I've been trying to figure things out. This whole SEO process has been a bit of a brain burner but its slowly becoming a little more clearer. For awhile I noticed that I was unable to get Open Site Explorer to display information about my site. It mentioned that that there was not enough data for the URL. Too recent of a site, no links, etc. Eventually I changed the the URL to include "www." and it pulled up results. I also noticed that a few of my page warnings are because of duplicate page content. One page will be listed as http://enbphotos.com. The other will be listed as http://www.enbphotos.com. I guess I'm not sure what this all means and how to change it. I'm also not really sure what the terminology even is and something regarding root domain seemed appropriate but I'm not sure if it is accurate. Any help/suggestions/links would be appreciated! Thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | enbphotos0 -
Feedback for the onpage seo for this site
Hi, Can the seo gurus here, suggest me if any on page factors affect my site? http://www.ridpiles.com/ Recently i have added, the following post to the main home page, http://www.ridpiles.com/2012/02/different-types-of-cures-for-piles/ This page is somewhat different than the title keyword. As the main page titile is "hemorrhoids treatment". The newly created blog post is on "cure for piles" Does this blog post has any affect on the on page factors due to different title? And do i require any changes regarding the on page seo? Will be waiting for your replies.
Technical SEO | | Indexxess0 -
Advertising and negative impact on SEO
On one of my sites, I've been trying to get the word out by contacting blogs and asking them to share my site with their readers. This has resulted in some free publicity for my site, as well as quite a few paid reviews/sponsored posts. Note, however, that I've never paid for links, just reviews of my site... When I started this about 2 months ago, my site was a PR3 and getting fairly lowsy organic search traffic (i.e. 30-40 visits a day from Google). Then a few days ago, my PR dropped to 1. I didn't worry too much though, because my organic traffic was still around 30-40 visits a day. Now today, I checked and I only had 1 visitor the entire day from Google. Obviously I've been penalized. My most important question is, what can I do? Do I have an recourse, or do I need to just shut the domain down and move elsewhere? Second, wtf is Google penalizing this? I understand the argument against paid links, but should I not be allowed to advertise my site? Apparently I can buy links all day long through Google and they'll happily take my money, but the minute I pay some poor blogger to write an article about my site to their audience, I get penalized? Please help, I can't believe I just destroyed one of my sites like this!
Technical SEO | | dustin9990 -
How does a mega drop-down affects SEO?
We are looking at implementing a "mega drop-down" as our main menu on our website. Will that be good or bad for SEO? My company is a big tour operator so our website contains a lot of pages describing all our destinations, hotels etc. We have noticed that our visitors have some trouble to navigate to all this pages since it requires a lot of clicks to reach a specific page. In order to make this easier we have looked at this popular mega drop-down thing that we all love. But what about Google? Will Google love or hate us for doing this? An example showing what I mean by mega drop-down: http://www.phonehouse.se/
Technical SEO | | Googleankan0