Helpful to utilize long-tail keyword URLs to point to parts of your website?
-
Does it help, hurt or do nothing for SEO to utilize long-tail keyword URLs to point to specific pages of your website.
For example, you're a vet and have your business name website, but what if you bought:
CharlotteVeterinarianforCats.com
CharlotteVeterinarianforDogs.com
etc. and pointed them to specific pages in your business website.
-
These are long-tail keyword domains. Yes, I would allow them to expire and allow my competitors use them in a strategy that is ineffective.
-
Let the domain names expire? Why? So the competition can pick them up and use them against you? You might not agree with my methods, but to let the domain names expire would be a mistake given the current weight google gives to exact match domains.
-
Agreed. And focus on best practices for local or regional optimization. If your business is only really focused in Charlotte, for instance, there are many other things you can do to help with this geo optimization.
-
I would let those domains expire and buy beer with the money savings. Then spend the time savings improving my primary website.
-
You are very welcome. If I could also suggest checking out the article "The Beginner's Checklist for Learning SEO"
It is under the "Learn SEO" tab. This might help you organize your to-do's and set up goals for your efforts!
-
Laurie,
I agree with Inhouseninja and would add this: When you buy the domain, try to purchase it so that it is under a different name, on a different server. Minimally, have it on a different C-block. I am not sure how much from a percentage point of view it can effect link evaluation, but we know that it does.
So, if both of the new domains are on the same server, owned by the same entity, you will not get near the weight from the search engines (if any).I do this in a couple of verticals but we the sites are actually fully related, have contact forms and other mechanisms for customer contact, etc. These sites are about 5 pages (not sure that any more would improve our lot) and we are able to use them for linking to the main site. If our main site did not exist, these would be real functioning sites that could be affiliate sites, etc.
Best,
-
The Whiteboard Friday video was perfect to help me start at the very beginning - thank you for suggesting that (I can't believe I missed it on my own!). There are a million things to do and consider and being overwhelmed and trying to piece it all together was the biggest problem. After the video, I'm starting at square one so I really appreciate your answer!
-
I can't tell you what the best approach is for you. For me, I look for domination of a niche when it comes to local search. The above posting is how I do it, but it might not be the best method for you. I haven't had success with simply redirecting a domain name. I have had great success with the method I've mentioned above - linking from the keyword domain to a page on my main site with the exact keyword phrase after the keyword domain has been established in Google. In fact, what I often see is the #1 ranking for the keyword domain (exact match keyword) and a #2 or #3 ranking for the page I link to from the keyword domain on my main site.
Hope that makes sense. lol.
-
I think you would be better off optimizing those pages for your target keywords instead and optimizing your current URL's to include your keywords.
For example: www.compnayname.com/cat-veterinarian
You should watch the most recent Whiteboard Friday. Rand does a great job of showing how to optimize website content based on the keywords you are trying to rank for.
-
Gotcha - so redirecting the keyword domain to a site on the main website with related content is probably not the best approach?
-
I have had extensive success with this method. The catch is that you need to make the long-tailed keyword URL a site that is actually useful to the world. Don't just put up a 2 page website and link like crazy to your site. You need to make it useful with good content. I'd say 10 pages minimum of quality content. You can do this in about 3-4 days with a wordpress. Also, don't link to your MAIN site for a few months so that google trusts your other domain.
Some will argue with this, but it has worked very well for me in some niche markets. Also, you hold a domain name so that a competitor can't get it. Considering the weight google puts on domain names its worth the extra effort to hold and use any domain names you can find.
Again, be careful not to turn the site into a doorway site. Make the site useful with new articles and fresh content.
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
-
Keyword Research for Low Volume Keywords
Hey friends, I'm looking for a little keyword research direction here, specifically for keywords and phrases with low search volume. I'm just going to give a recent example: I just finished a piece of content on customer experience. I began the process with some keyword research. Based on Moz's keyword explorer, "customer experience" has a monthly volume of 2.9k-4.3k. Sweet. So I move onto related queries and longer tail phrases to narrow my content approach. But just about any relevant phrase shows either a volume of 0-10 or 11-50 and very similar difficulty metrics, making it tough to choose a direction. So "what is customer experience" shows a monthly volume of 0-10. SEM Rush reports ~350 searches a month. I understand SEM Rush uses broader match, but I guess what I'm asking is: how do I perform keyword research with such minuscule volumes and such little data to differentiate? I've looked at Russ Jones' answer to a similar question here on how Keyword Explorer works: https://moz.com/community/q/what-is-a-good-keyword-volume-score ... but I still don't have a ton of clarity. Any advice would be awesome!
Keyword Research | | brooksmanley0 -
Accuracy of search volume for keyword planner v old keyword tool?
Hi there, I'm (logged into Google Adwords) and researching search volume for keywords but I'm seeing weird results. I know that the term "outage notification" had between 1000 and 5000 monthly global searches when I last looked (I know this because I add a search volume tag to the keywords I track ranking of via Moz). Yet, now when I check global search volume via keyword planner I'm seeing only 70 global searches per month (AND low competition which I know is not true). Is this perhaps because only the exact match is reported or is something else going on? Very frustrated as I have now lost faith in the keyword research process via Google keyword planner....not sure where to go from here!! Thanks very much
Keyword Research | | SnapComms1 -
Using a country in your keywords
My company has recently started offering services in South Africa - which is great - same language - lot of potential there. But I suspect our keyword research is suffering from "thinking like a foreigner". i.e. "buy cars South Africa" rather than "buy cars". Wouldn't google.co.za naturally assume: 1) Anyone using their service for "buy cars" is looking for "buy cars South Africa" (I know it's more complicated - Google will give different results the more it can figure out about your location) 2) That any co.za site optimised for "buy cars" is automatically 90% optimised for "buy cars South Africa" too - so isn't a productive long tail query (against something like “buy sports cars”) I appreciate that some companies will be TARGETING foreign browsers (i.e. holiday accommodation South Africa) so will need to explicitly optimise their on-site for the country for “foreign search engines”. But I'm asking about companies in South Africa targeting people from South Africa.
Keyword Research | | Ali310 -
Keywords in SEO Moz versus Keywords on pages
II'm a little confused by how the SEO Moz keywords relate to our page keywords. Should all the keywords we put in SEO Moz be in our page keywords? Can our SEO Moz keywords span the kepywords of severla pages or do we need ot tighten up and only use 5 for example keywords in SEO Moz and on our pages? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | THMCC0 -
A question about local longtail keywords
Hello all. This is my first interaction with SEOmoz, and I am still in my learning phases. I currently own a lawn fertilization company near Allentown, PA. I do the site for myself, and I am ranked number one for organic lawn care for my cities. My question may seem kind of elementary, but I just want to clear this up for myself. I want to start a side business doing SEO, and from what I gather step one is keyword research. I plan on building new sites to start as opposed to going in and fixing existing ones. So, I've been reading a lot on how to do keyword research and so forth. I will use my current business as a reference for my question. Should my main keywords be along the lines of "lawn care" and "lawn services", and then the location specific stuff be seperate? Or should my main keywords be "lawn care allentown, pa"? I plan on running my business solely for local businesses, so I am not to interested in competing with the entire world for keywords. I just wasn't sure how to differentiate my keyword research for local business. I hope that question made some sense. I am really starting to grasp the elements of SEO, but for some reason the keyword part of things perplexes me. Thanks for any responses!
Keyword Research | | GroundFloorSEO0 -
Why are my keywords not being crawled
In my google web tools. the keywords that are about my site are not being crawled. I have them in my Meta descriptions and keyword meta, but still arne't showing in significant keyword list for google.
Keyword Research | | TheGroom0 -
International Keyword Ranking
I want measure my ranking for keywords in various countries and search engines. If I use a tool such as rank checker to determine my rank for google.uk, google.au.com, etc... is that accurate, or does my IP still affect the rankings I see? If I use a VPS such as Hide My Ass (or another product you would recommend), would that make my ranking results more accurate? I also want to measure my ranking in Russia, where Yandex is very strong so a tool to measure my Yandex ranking + Google would be ideal. What method you would recommend to accurately determine my rankings in different countries? Thank you!
Keyword Research | | theLotter0 -
How to choose Keywords
Am starting a company and in the process of developing the website. I would like to get a head start on content and want to know the best way to choose keywords and tips on how to write optimized content.
Keyword Research | | jclubb0