Should I Use City Name in URL?
-
Having a website designed for a car dealership and deciding what attributes to use in the URL. Should I include the city name in the URL? Or does that help for SEO purposes?
Other ideas of what to research or try are appreciated too.
Thanks
-
While I have read that the importance of a business name matching the domain name exactly could be deemed extremely beneficial, having the city name in with the appropriate keyword, and proper optimization should make for an extremely strong listing.
-
Matt Cutts has referred to "keyword" domain names being an issue they are looking at. ( Missing citation here of exact quotes)
We used city names for a long time, but have moved away from them, as we now have the same results without them. I should note that Bing seems to be highly sensitive to keywords in the domain, and I think the city in the domain is exactly that.
Our research is limited, so take this as my 2 cents only.
-
Is it going to have dynamically created pages and URL's or are there going to be static pages? Personally I would include the city name in the URL (eg www.cars.co.uk/london-car-hire.html -> if it's going to be dynamic then you might do it like www.cars.co.uk/carhire/london)
You could seperate your content by city and then town or if the company leases cars too(or might do lease to own option or maybe even rentals in the future) then it's a good idea to think about the scope so that it will be easier in the future when expanding
edit : I realise my example is car hire and not sales but the same principal applies
-
1. I don't think in the domain name you should use your city unless you want to improve rankings on specific keyword match
ex: you want to rank better for car dealer chicago
If you buy cardealerchicago.com exactly it will help you a bit but any other variation ex: if someone searches car dealer in chicago you domain won't get sort of the boost it need because is not exact match....
SO unless what i mentioned 1st i suggest buy a domain that is easy to remember for the user so when he comes the 1st time straight away they remember the domain they landed. Great for further advertising, marketing etc.
2. Now by reading your question again seems like you have the domain name domain.com/ and you are wondering if you should use it in the url /car-dealer-chicago
I think it depends on your on-page optimization if you can format you content to have these car dealer chicago everywhere then i think you can aviod using it in the url IF your website is showing ONLY 1 car dealer you should aviod that. If listing multiple car dealers in a specific city then yes definetly use it.
So response 2 in my opinion avoid using city name in url as google knows the cities etc if you mention it in your content unless you list multiple car dealers in a specific area.
Keep it short, clear and simple... everyone loves that including Google.
Hope it helps.
-
If you are starting from scratch, I think it is extremely beneficial to have a keyword rich domain that includes the name of the city. This of course depends what other words you have go with the rest of the domain name of course.
I do not believe you will win with a keyword rich domain name alone, but again...it's a fantastic place to begin.
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
-
Will URLS With Existing 301 Redirects Be as Powerful As New URLS In Serps?
Most products on our site have redirects to them from years of switching platform and merely trying to get a great and optimised URL for SEO purposes. My question is this: If a product URL has alot of redirects (301's), would it be more beneficial to me to create a duplicated version of the product and start fresh with a new URL? I am not on here trying to gain backlinks but my site is tn nursery dot net (proof:)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tammysons
I need some quality help figuring out what to do.
Tammy0 -
Is there any set benefit in using a URL tracking engine on a domain for passing link juice?
Is there any set benefit in using a URL tracking engine on a domain for passing link juice? I.E. xxxx.com?$id=1111 to then redirect to shareasale? The client has an affiliate program and is thinking of running one in-house as well. Is there a benefit to a “redirect engine” that uses the website root domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KellyBrady1 -
Domain Name Migation + HTTPS?
One of our clients is considering migrating their domain name _and _changing protocol (http to https), as well as changing hosting providers, at the same time. Is it fine to make the changes at the same time, or would you recommend 'phasing' the migration?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThreeShips1 -
Image URL Change Catastrophe
We have a site with over 3mm pages indexed, and an XML sitemap with over 12mm images (312k indexed at peak). Last week our traffic dropped off a cliff. The only major change we made to the site in that time period was adding a DNS record for all of our images that moved them from a SoftLayer Object Storage domain to a subdomain of our site. The old URLs still work, but we changed all the links from across our site to the new subdomain. The big mistake we made was that we didn't update our XML sitemap to the new URLs until almost a week after the switch (totally forgot that they were served from a process with a different config file). We believe this was the cause of the issue because: The pages that dropped in traffic were the ones where the images moved, while other pages stayed more or less the same. We have some sections of our property where the images are, and have always been, hosted by Amazon and their rankings didn't crater. Same with pages that do not have images in the XML sitemap (like list pages). There wasn't a change in geographic breakdown of our traffic, which we looked at because the timing was around the same time as Pigeon. There were no warnings or messages in Webmaster Tools, to indicate a manual action around something unrelated. The number of images indexed in our sitemap according Webmaster Tools dropped from 312k to 10k over the past week. The gap between the change and the drop was 5 days. It takes Google >10 to crawl our entire site, so the timing seems plausible. Of course, it could be something totally unrelated and just coincidence, but we can't come up with any other plausible theory that makes sense given the timing and pages affected. The XML sitemap was updated last Thursday, and we resubmitted it to Google, but still no real change. Anyone had a similar experience? Any way to expedite the climb back to normal traffic levels? Screen%20Shot%202014-07-29%20at%203.38.34%20PM.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wantering0 -
Changing your URL? Impact on rankings?
I have been thinking about changing our webadres for quite a while but I'm too afraid of the impact on my SERP. I understand I would need to use the Google Change of Address tool & 301 redirects. Am I missing something? What is your experience with changing the URL of a website? How has this impacted your SERP? In the past I heard someone say it will damage the linkjuice by 20%. Is that accurate? If you change the URL, is there a blank period of where your old site nor your new site are indexed? Or does Google handle this transition well?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wellnesswooz0 -
URL language on Global Sites
Has anyone looked into a page not ranking as well because the URL is in English when the subdomain is geared for a different country and different language? I can defiantly see this taking away from the user experience, but didn't know if there was any concrete evidence or case studies that would show if it is a big deal or not for rankability? I know this is a backwards question to begin with because the priority over rankability is always UX, but there may not be a way to fix it unless I can prove it is a big deal.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ryan_Henry0 -
Canonical URL Question
Hi Everyone I like to run this question by the community and get a second opinion on best practices for an issue that I ran into. I got two pages, Page A is the original page and Page B is the page with duplicate content. We already added** ="Page A**" />** to the duplicate content (Page B).** **Here is my question, since Page B is duplicate content and there is a link rel="canonical" added to it, would you put in the time to add meta tags and optimize the title of the page? Thanks in advance for all your help.**
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DRTBA0 -
Exact match domain names
Hello, Someone approached a client of mine to sell a exact match domain name for a very competitive and high converting keyword. Would this be of any use and what are the best tactics to employ if it is purchased? I was of the opinion that the 'power' of exact match domain names are dying fast but would be interested to hear what people with experience in this think and what they have done with them (i.e. set-up a website on that domain or re-directed it)? Thanks, Rikki
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RikkiD220