Keyword in URL - SEO impact
-
Hi,
We don't have most important keyword of our industry in our domain or sub-domain. How important it is to have keyword in website URL? Most of our competitors pages with "keyword" urls been listing in SERP. What is back-links role in this scenarion? And which URL have more advantage? keyword in sub-domain or page with keyword. Like for "seo" keyword..... seo.example.com or example.com/seo
-
Hi JK,
Thanks for the reply.
First of all, this is an old article, and many (if not all) of the information given has changed in Google search algorithms.
In the case you are describing, in nowadays SEO (2019), I'd suggest you not to focus on having any keyword weight in the domain/subdomain.
Keep both services in the same domain, under the same company name. Google will understand that its the same company offering two services. Of course, you should have different pages for both services.
Probably would be of help, creating really good content to give context and use internal linking to tell Google which are your main pages and targeted search terms.Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston -
GR,
Appreciate the advice. We are working with a customer that offers two very different services (janitorial services and pest control). We have 2 options for organizing their site.
Option A: 1 website under the main company name with dual focus
Option B: 2 seperate site 1 for each service giving main service the company domain name and the secondary service the company domain name - janitorial.com
Would enjoy to hear your thoughts on this!
Thanks,
JK
-
Yeap, it should be redirected to relevant pages. Not to the homepage nor less relevant pages, because it's treated as a soft 404 error.
Here a great article:
Proof That 301 Redirects To Less-Relevant Pages Are Seen As Soft 404s To Google [Case Study] Google May Treat Expired Products Page Redirects As Soft 404s And, what google considers as Soft 404 errorsHope it helps.
GR. -
Thanks GR.
I have gone through the Moz article on 301 redirects. They say that every redirect comes with certain amount of SEO risk. What exactly it might be?
And everybody say that we must redirect to relevant page. I can understand that 2 pages content must be relevant, but what's the importance of URL here? Do we need a match in URL keywords too? Because, if a non-existing link is redirected to existing page, what will be the metrics to pass link juice or any risk as there will be no content in one of these pages and how bots check? Like for below example:
website.com/folder/page1/content/ is a non-existing page and if it's redirected to website.com or website.com/folder2/page14.
Thanks,
Satish
-
You're welcome, we are here to help.
Theoretically, there is no linkjuice loss with redirects.
Take a look in this article about the last news and update on Google about 3xx redirects.:
301 Redirects Rules Change: What You Need to Know for SEOHope I've helped.
GR. -
Thanks for the suggestions GR. That gives us an idea to proceed on.
We are also planning to move all the links from one subdirectory to another subdirectory. But we will be redirecting them to related pages.
For example, website.com/folder1/seo-changes to website.com/folder2/seo-changes
Only sub directory gonna change. But we have many links pointing to sub directory we are directing. Do the same link juice passes to these links redirected to another sub directory?
-
Hi there.
I've conducted some experiments on having the keyword in several places: Exact match domain, subdomain, subdirectory and in the slug.
My conclusions are:- Having it in a subdomain doen't help at all.
- Having it in a exact match domain (e.g. keyword.com) helps very little and creates a problem when the business tries to expand to more search terms.
- Having it in a subdirectory (e.g. domain.com/my-keyword/some-page) doesnt help much, unless you're trying to rank the page that comes at the subdirectory. This latter makes it a single page or just a slug
- Having it in the slug (e.g. domain.com/single-page-keyword) helps, makes the difference.
My opinion, when it comes to on-page optimization and keyword optimization, it's mandatory to place the main (or some variation of it) in the final URL.
In all my expriments, always there was a correct optimization (on page and for that kw). And were focused for similar kw with similar search difficulties.---- UPDATE ---
Here some information and resources:15 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs - Moz blog
URL - Moz's learn On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page (2016 Update) - Backlinko---- UPDATE ---
Hope ir helps.
GR.
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
-
The main navigation is using JS, will this have a negative impact on SEO?
Hi mozzers, We just redesigned our homepage and discovered that our main nav is using JS and when disabling JS, no main nav links was showing up. Is this still considered bad practice for SEO? https://cl.ly/14ccf2509478 thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty19861 -
Is it better to optimise for several keywords/keyword variations on one page, or create sub categories for those specific terms?
I've done a fair of research to try to find the answer to this, but different people seem to give very different opinions, and none of the info I could find is recent! I'm working with a company that produces a range of industrial products that fit into 6 main categories, within this categories, there are types of products and the products themselves. Prior to my involvement most of the content was added to the product pages and very little was added to the overall category page. The structure works like this: Electronic devices > type of device > products The 'type of device' category could be something like a switch, but within that category are 3/4 different switch types...leaving me with 11 or 12 primary keyword/phrases to aim for as each switch is searched for in more than one way. Should I try to rank for all of those terms using that one category page? Or should I change the structure to something like: Electronic devices > type of device > sub-category/specific variation of device > product This would mean creating a page for each variation to have a more accute focus for a small number of phrases..but it also means I've added another step between the home page and the products. Any advice is welcome! I'm worried I'm overthinking it!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adam_SEO_Learning0 -
How Does Yelp Create URLs?
Hi all, How does Yelp (or other sites) go about creating URLs for just about every service and city possible ending with the search? in the URL like this https://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=chiropractors&find_loc=West+Palm+Beach%2C+FL. They clearly aren't creating all of these pages, so how do you go about setting a meta title/optimization formula that allows these pages to exist AND to be crawled by search engines and indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
SEO - Use pages on main site or set up outside keyword rich domains and websites
I have a client who is wanting to target searches for competitors products. His idea was to purchase domains related to the searches he's targeting (for example, people looking for another company's app) and to build out one page websites addressing the search query and why a customer would choose his app solution over a competitor. I know he'd have to build a handful of links to each site for any chance of success but I wanted to ask the following.. Would doing this be better than just building pages addressing the searches on his main website domain? Is there an SEO risk to doing this? Potential for a penalty? Anything we need to do to structure these in a way that won't violate Google's SEO guidelines? Any other thoughts on pros and cons of each strategy? Thank you! Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
"Category" word in URLs of blog is it SEO Friendly URL ??
Hello respected community members, I saw many times that "Category" word comes in URL of blog. So my que is that is this negative for SEO or Positive. & if we don't wanna to come CATEGORY in URL how can we remove while URL Optimization ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sourabhrana390 -
Can multiple redirects from old URLs hurt SEO?
We have a client that had an existing site with existing rankings. We rebuilt the site using DNN 7 and created/tested 301 redirects from all the Original URLs to the new DNN URLs which are nasty and have /tabid/1234 and will not allow for dashes (-)'s We have found a DNN module that will make the DNN 7 URLs search friendly. However, that will cause us to 301 the current DNN urls to the new URLs so in fact the original will redirect to the DNN and the DNN will redirect to the rewritten SEO friendly URLs. What should we know here before proceeding?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tjkirgin0 -
Lots of incorrect urls indexed - Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site
Hi, Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Basically, our rankings and traffic etc have been dropping massively recently google sent us a message stating " Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site". This first highligted us to the problem that for some reason our eCommerce site has recently generated loads (potentially thousands) of rubbish urls hencing giving us duplication everywhere which google is obviously penalizing us with in the terms of rankings dropping etc etc. Our developer is trying to find the route cause of this but my concern is, How do we get rid of all these bogus urls ?. If we use GWT to remove urls it's going to take years. We have just amended our Robot txt file to exclude them going forward but they have already been indexed so I need to know do we put a redirect 301 on them and also a HTTP Code 404 to tell google they don't exist ? Do we also put a No Index on the pages or what . what is the best solution .? A couple of example of our problems are here : In Google type - site:bestathire.co.uk inurl:"br" You will see 107 results. This is one of many lot we need to get rid of. Also - site:bestathire.co.uk intitle:"All items from this hire company" Shows 25,300 indexed pages we need to get rid of Another thing to help tidy this mess up going forward is to improve on our pagination work. Our Site uses Rel=Next and Rel=Prev but no concanical. As a belt and braces approach, should we also put concanical tags on our category pages whereby there are more than 1 page. I was thinking of doing it on the Page 1 of our most important pages or the View all or both ?. Whats' the general consenus ? Any advice on both points greatly appreciated? thanks Sarah.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
How important is it to canonicalize mobile URLs to desktop URLs?
I know many SEO's prefer a stylesheet and single URL, but if you use m.domain.com, do you canonicalize to your desktop URLS?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0