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 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
-
My url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!
Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
Brand name not ranking in Google
Hi Moz'ers, Could you help me with something I cannot seem to figure out by myself. In June 2017 my company started a rebranding campaign. We've changed our brand name and launched a new website: https://spotler.com. Everything is going fine, but if you Google our brand name "Spotler" our website doesn't show up. How can it be? Our domain authority is 38. It would be wonderful if you could help me. Let me know if you need more information. Best, Simone
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spotler0 -
Using hreflang for international pages - is this how you do it?
My client is trying to achieve a global presence in select countries, and then track traffic from their international pages in Google Analytics. The content for the international pages is pretty much the same as for USA pages, but the form and a few other details are different due to how product licensing has to be set up. I don’t want to risk losing ranking for existing USA pages due to issues like duplicate content etc. What is the best way to approach this? This is my first foray into this and I’ve been scanning the MOZ topics but a number of the conversations are going over my head,so suggestions will need to be pretty simple 🙂 Is it a case of adding hreflang code to each page and creating different URLs for tracking. For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caro-O
URL for USA: https://company.com/en-US/products/product-name/
URL for Canada: https://company.com/en-ca/products/product-name /
URL for German Language Content: https://company.com/de/products/product-name /
URL for rest of the world: https://company.com/en/products/product-name /1 -
Reverting back to old domain name.
I've recently been asked by a client if I can foresee any issues with reverting back to their original domain name. With the original domain name they had a pretty decent DA for their sector which they have now lost. Although I do appreciate that over time this might come back, the CEO is very keen to switch back to the old domain. They do currently have 301 redirects from the old domain to the new and have implemented rel canonical. As yet they have not notified Google of the change of address using Webmaster Tools. Can anyone forsee any issues with returning back to the old domain name? They have only been using the new domain name for a couple of months which currently has a DA for 1.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Macrofireball0 -
Replace dynamic paramenter URLs with static Landing Page URL - faceted navigation
Hi there, got a quick question regarding faceted navigation. If a specific filter (facet) seems to be quite popular for visitors. Does it make sense to replace a dynamic URL e.x http://www.domain.com/pants.html?a_type=239 by a static, more SEO friendly URL e.x http://www.domain.com/pants/levis-pants.html by creating a proper landing page for it. I know, that it is nearly impossible to replace all variations of this parameter URLs by static ones but does it generally make sense to do this for the most popular facets choose by visitors. Or does this cause any issues? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks a lot in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ennovators0 -
Internal links and URL shortners
Hi guys, what are your thoughts using bit.ly links as internal links on blog posts of a website? Some posts have 4/5 bit.ly links going to other pages of our website (noindexed pages). I have nofollowed them so no seo value is lost, also the links are going to noindexed pages so no need to pass seo value directly. However what are your thoughts on how Google will see internal links which have essential become re-direct links? They are bit.ly links going to result pages basically. Am I also to assume the tracking for internal links would also be better using google analytics functionality? is bit.ly accurate for tracking clicks? Any advice much appreciated, I just wanted to double check this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Better to use specific cities or counties for SEO geographics?
Hello SEO experts! We are encountering a difficult situation at our marketing firm with a client who wants to optimize her site for keyworks + counties, as she doesn't want to be restricted to one specific city. We have suggested alternate solutions like location pages, utilization of H2's, etc, however, she wants to know the effectiveness of using a specific city (ie: Winona, MN) vs a county (ie: Winona County, MN) for SEO purposes. The research I have conducted thus far hasn't gotten me very far, basically I'm seeing that it all comes back to what people search for (cleaning services in Winona, MN vs. cleaning services in Winona County, MN). Does anyone have any insight into this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MLTGroup0 -
Urls missing from product_cat sitemap
I'm using Yoast SEO plugin to generate XML sitemaps on my e-commerce site (woocommerce). I recently changed the category structure and now only 25 of about 75 product categories are included. Is there a way to manually include urls or what is the best way to have them all indexed in the sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kisen0