Service Keyword in URL - too much?
-
We're working on revamping the URL structure for a site from the ground up. This firm provides a service and has a library of case studies to back up their work. Here's some options on URL structure:
1. /cases/[industry keyword]-[service keyword] (for instance: /cases/retail-pest-control)
There is some search traffic for the industry/service combination, so that would be the benefit of using both in URL. But we'd end up with about 70 pages with the same service keyword at the end.
2. /cases/[industry keyword] (/cases/retail)
Shorter, less spam potential, but have to optimize for the service keyword -- the primary -- in another way.
3. /cases/clientname (/cases/wehaveants)
No real keyword potential but better usability.
We also want the service keyword to rank on its own on another page (so, a separate "pest control" page). So don't want to dilute that page's value even after we chase some of the long tail traffic.
Any thoughts on the best course of action? Thanks!
-
Awesome, thanks
-
two or three layers into it, hyphens vs. slashes is not as critical as too many hyphens in the primary domain name.
Personally, I believe it's better user experience to go with slashes rather than hyphens to clearly visually split out services vs. industries vs. company names. But that's just my preference and belief regarding usability.
-
That's what I needed to hear.
I think maybe a cases/pest-control/industry-company or industry/company structure will work nicely then. I can fix a good link structure no problem. Thanks!
-
the number of directories is pretty much illusionary - it's how many clicks to get to something that matters.
That's the key. It ultimately depends on how many case studies you're dealing with as to how you link to them.
Here's an example
Cases is a top level site-wide link.
On the Cases page, there's a description of each service, and a link within that description to that service's page.
Then on that service page, there's a brief snippet for each case study, where you group them on that page by industry type.
That's three clicks down to the individual case study. And in that scenario, you can go with the URL syntax I previously suggested.
So while the "folder structure" "appears" to be four layers deep
case-studies/pest-control/retail/company-name/
The linking methods above are only three deep. So you're totally within SEO best practices.
-
Ah, now that's a question! As far as I WAS aware it was always best to go for a "flat as possible" structure (so minimal directories). BUT... I've recently been informed (on these very boards, and from a very experienced pro) that it no longer matters as long as the linking structure is good, so there's plenty of links from strong pages, such as the homepage pointing in... so it will get crawled no matter how deep.
-
Alan, you've made me think of a question myself on that... you know the whole rule about not having too many hyphens in a domain, well how much of that extends to the rest of the URL/path after the initial domain?
Not sure I worded that very well. I mean, as we know, www.thing-blah-flip-flop.com is bad... and www.thing-blah.com is okay, but what about: www.thing-blah.com/flip-flop-give-a-dog-a-bone-is-this-too-many-hyphens-in-this-part-of-the-url-after-the-domain.html
I know there's tonnes of it about, but does it matter?
(Sorry to hijack the question lol, I assume it's still relevant though).
-
I suppose I meant the depth of the directories... Finding the page three or four directories in (I asked the same in response to Alan).
Thanks for all the help!
-
So when working with the directories, if we structure navigation so that you can get to a specific case study with two clicks, does that offset the depth of the directory structure? So, if it happened to be (hopefully not) cases/retail/pest-control/MI/Detroit/company-name, will the number of subfolders be an issue, as long as you could get to the page through two clicks from home?
-
How many is too many? I mean you don't want a directory per page or anything.
-
Yes definitely!
I assume if they're all landing pages then you wouldn't be targeting each page with the same keywords anyway, as that would be massive canibalization. You want to just assign 2 or 3 keywords to each page, then have one of them in the URL (the main one).
-
Would it make any sense to you to group them by service? so...
cases/pest-control/industry-company
Less spammy, but wonder about the impact of too many directories.
-
whether you do retail-pest-control or retail/pest-control - either is acceptable and as long as the sequence ordering is consistent you will achieve the same results.
So they should all be industry-service or service-industry.
-
The idea is that yes, they can all be landing pages. The pages as they're sitting now are driving some traffic from these long-tail keyword combinations -- we'd like not to lose that when we make the change.
Can the service keywords be variations? So, could it be retail-pest-control, restaurant-termite-control, athletic-ant-extermination? (samples again, of course)
-
Unless there's only one company in each combination of service and industry, having the company name or another differentiator as the last element in the URL is vital for individual page topical relevance. Company Names make the most sense from a user perspective.
-
I agree. Find a way to use no.1 and make it not spammy.
-
It depends on which is more important to you whether best practices dictate the industry first or the service type first, however generally speaking, they should both be in the URL.
So for example:
case-studies/pest-control/retail/company-name/
case-studies/retail/pest-control/company/name/
Some might argue that can cause long URLs, it's best practices, especially since Google is quite efficient these days when a site is structured properly like this, to be able to display portions of URLs most relevant to a search. So if the search was for pest control in the retail field, the URL in the search result might look like:
yourdomain.com/case-studies/retail/../pest-control/...
And doing it one of these two ways is the best way to build topical relationships, which in turn boosts the relevance of the site for the industries and services.
Oh - and you can do this and still have all the core content no more than two or three clicks from the top level.
-
I'd check others' opinions too, but mine is option 1 without dupe service keywords for the win... why must every page have that same keyword at the end, are they all landing pages you're optimizing?
Anyway, if option 1 without doing that then it's not spammy as far as I see and do, it's descriptive, allows link architecture to map site architecture... and you've got your keywords in there. Gets my vote, but yeah I'd wait for clarification or disagreement from others on that before taking any action
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
-
One word Keywords
Hey as you know that as a seo we are, we always optimize keywords which are at least 2 words, and lets say I'm trying to optimize a page for terms like "man clothing, man london clothing, man great collection, man stylus collection" and as you can guess I optimize this pages for this keywords by inputting them into title heading tags and body.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atakala
So my question is , what if google takes "man" phrase from my 2 words keywords, and pretend as a my keyword. (I mean what if google thinks my keywords is man because as you can see in all of the keywords "man" is in all of them.)
And what if Google thinks the density of "man" probably would be %20 which is astronomic number.? Sorry for my bad english.0 -
Keyword Frequent On and Drop Off
Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me. I am currently doing SEO for a client’s site, over the past few weeks the keywords have gradually gone up steadily. One of the keywords however continues to jump on and off rankings. For a few days it will jump up to 23<sup>rd</sup> in Google Rankings, but then it will completely drop of the radar, not even in the top 200 anymore. I’ve gone through the site to check if there is anything wrong and stuck to guidelines offered here on SEO Moz but I’m stumped to figure it out. The Keyword has a page that helps target it, there is no stuffing, all I can think is if there are bad back-links coming in to us that Google that continues to push down the rankings. Can anyone help shed some light on the situation for me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kal-SEO0 -
Consolidating MANY separate domains into a much better, single URL: Should I point a landing page or redirect to the new site?
I am consolidating a site for a client who previously, and very foolishly, broke up their domains like so: companyparis.com companyflorence.com companyrome.com etc... I am now done with the new site, which will be at: company.eu with pages as appropriate: company.eu/paris company.eu/florence company.eu/rome This domain, although not entirely new, does not have much authority or rank. In terms of SEO and link-building, is it better to redirect the old domain to the specific page on the new domain: companyparis.com --> company.eu/paris or... is it better to put a landing page at the old domain LINKING to the page on the new domain: companyparis.com --> landing page linking to --> company.eu/paris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thongly0 -
International URL Puzzle
Hello, I have 4 different URL's going to 4 different countries that all contain the same content and Google is seeing them as duplicate pages. For ecommerce reasons I have to have these 4 pages separated. Here is a example of the pages below so you can see the URL structure: www.example/com/canada www.example.com/australia www.example.com/usa www.example.com/UK How do I fix this duplicate content problem? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalops0 -
Best url structure
I am making a new site for a company that services many cities. I was thinking a url structure like this, website.com/keyword1-keyword2-keyword3/cityname1-cityname2-cityname3-cityname4-cityname5. Will this be the best approach to optimize the site for the keyword plus 5 different cities ? as long as I keep the total url characters under the SeoMoz reccomended 115 characters ? Or would it be better to build separate pages for each city, trying to reword the main services to try to avoid dulpicate content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
Long URL with QueryStrings
Hi, I have a search page that generates some querystrings (with the term, current page, number of pages etc). This long url is something bad for Google indexing? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GDB0 -
How important is sticking to an exact keyword?
The latest article I'm writing for my site is "Friends With Benefits Rules"... So the first part of my question is, what does SEOMoz advocate as being the ideal # of times to include the entire key phrase in the article? I know nobody but Google knows for certain, but is 4 (including in H1's etc.) generally considered enough, other than in the page title? Second part is, what is the consensus about how important is it to stick to the exact keyword? For the example I gave, is it just as good to include a comma, E.g. "...friends with benefits, rules..." or a hyphen "Friends with Benefits - Rules for..."? One thing I'm unclear about on this topic is stop words and plurals. I've been told before that Google ignores stop words, but results for searches with or without the word "how," for example produce very different results... Same thing with plurals. In any case, all of the above is assuming that the quality of the content would not be affected in either case...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corp08030 -
Subdirectory URLs
If I have category pages for my site; is it better to use http://example.com/category/category or just http://example.com/category? Also, I'm creating a new section of the site; a resource center. Should the URLs of the pages in the resource center be http://example.com/learn/page or just http://example.com/page What are the reasons for the better choice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0