Exact Match Domain + shorter permalink vs. longer permalink?
-
So here's the scenario...
You own the exact match domain for "Acupuncture Intake Form" and want to create a page that targets the phrase, "Acupuncture Intake Form Template"...
In terms of SEO, which of the following permalinks does a better job targeting the term "Acupuncture Intake Form Template" :
A) www.acupunctureintakeform.com/template/
B) www.acupunctureintakeform.com/acupuncture-intake-form-template/
From a user-friendliness perspective, I can definitely see why the /template/ is more ideal. It's more memorable, easier to link to, and logical.
I'm just wondering whether there is some edge that the /acupuncture-intake-form-template/ has that I'm not aware of, or if there's some gray area.
I can also think of scenarios where the longer version might be better. For example, if there were several different kinds of acupuncture intake form templates. If that were the case, then /template/ might be too vague (e.g. is it the normal "acupuncture intake form template" or is it the "acupuncture intake form template with diagram"). So in that respect, the longer one might be less concise in certain situations, but in others provide more clarity.
(Note: I'm looking for answers to this situation as it applies to any website. I just chose this extremely small niche exact match domain because it's an example that illustrate my questions).
Thanks in advance for any answers, insights, or comments! I'm not sure if there's a specific answer, but I'm sure there are some key points to discuss.
Michael
-
Rebekah, Igor, and Greg - thanks for the helpful (and quick!) responses, I appreciate it.
-
www.acupunctureintakeform.com/template/ is a much better idea.
There will be no benefit in terms of SEO for you to repeat the keyword in the URL
As for the future pages, you could always do the following
www.acupunctureintakeform.com/template/
www.acupunctureintakeform.com/template-with-diagrame/
www.acupunctureintakeform.com/template-with-pictures/
etc
Hope that helps.
Greg
-
Hello Michael,
In my opinion since you already have an exact match domain and making your URL to the template as www.acupunctureintakeform.com/acupuncture-intake-form-template/
is kind of redundant, long, doesn't look that good, and might look like you're trying to manipulate rankings by doing keyword stuffing.
I would recommend something like:
www.acupunctureintakeform.com/template-forms
www.acupunctureintakeform.com/templates
etc..
I think its better to concentrate on the ON PAGE SEO, its far more important to have good content that will lure in visitors and make them link and share you content VS getting a headache from worrying about the URL address. Obviously I'm not talking about completely ignoring it and putting your template under something like /contact us/ section. Just make it easy and straight to the point, I think that is the best way to do it. In my case I tend to over think things which is not a good thing, so lately I go with the first idea that comes to me that looks and sounds simple!
-
I personally think it would be best to use /template. Or in the case of specific templates, shorten the full phrase to /intake-template/ and then take advantage of the Title tag, H1s and other on-page content to target the keywords you are looking for. With the second scenario you are relying too much on the URL for your keywords and this may send a spammy signal - especially if combined with other optimization efforts.
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
-
Change SEO focus from homepage to other page on the domain
Hi, we are (were) ranking top 5 with gietvloer-wand.nl by focussing the homepage for a certain keyword. We're trying to change to focus from the homepage to /gietvloeren with more content / information. How to go about this? how to tell Google that /gietvloeren is more relevant / important then than the homepage? Or any experiences how long it will take for Google to see that the page has more information than the homepage? It's a test and any experiences you can share would be great. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Heers0 -
With the release of so many domains from .expert through to even .xyz why don't we see many around the top of SERPS?
And should I use one of these to create a nice looking site, invest time, energy, resource, money or will I simply regret it later and stick to the main TLDs? First question on Moz (yey)
On-Page Optimization | | LGG1230 -
Getting the Titles and Headings Right on Product Pages. Userbility vs SEO
Hey Mozzers, I am optimising a chaotic section of the site including many similar products. Writing unique content etc. The titles and urls were all over the place so my first job was to tidy them up so I could make some sense of the situation, especially as sometimes they didn't even match! I should point out were on Magento, so product name = Both the Heading and Title of the page, the meta title can be set separately. When i refer to title I mean both <title>and <h1></strong><br /><br />Before they existed as such<br />URL: domain.com/200-x-0-5-g-rs-232-balance.html<br />TItle: PC-1234 200 x 0.5g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br /><br />This format was (Product Code, Capacities, Resolutions, Accuracy, Product Title)<br /><br />The issue was all 60 products in a page followed this format. Navigating through the page was a nightmare and was just a jumble of numbers and highly confusing even to me who learnt what they all mean, especially when you had 8 products from the same range you got presented with<br /><br />APC-1234 200 x 0.5g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1235 500 x 1g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1236 1000 x 2g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1238 5000 x 10g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1239 10000 x 15g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1210 20000 x 25g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1211 50000 x 50g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance</p> <p>I changed them to something more user friendly.<br /><br />URL: domain.com/200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: 200g Precision Balance<br /><br />This has seen the following benefits<br />- URL is now clear and means something to the user<br />- Product titles are easy to navigate and the page is more pleasing to the eye<br />- The jumble of numbers in the title are now all labelled and shown below each product listing in bullet point so the user can see the basic spec of a product without having to decipher any titles<br /><br />Upon reflection I has a couple of concerns I was hoping you could discuss, I am wondering if I have made the titles too simple.<br />1) I have no product code in the title<br />We have our own products manufactured and sell existing brands with their own product codes. Some of these can be lengthy. Adding them makes them hard to the eye and the page looked cramped.<br /><br />The codes are listed beneath each product title on category pages and on a list on the actual product page, but no where in the titles. <br /><br />2)None of our products have a brand listed in the title<br />None of the products on the site had brand names in anything but the images when i started and as such it snuck under my radar. But should i pre-fix all titles with a brand name?<br /><br />Should </p> <p>URL: domain.com/200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: 200g Precision Balance</p> <p>become</p> <p>URL: domain.com/BRAND1-200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: BRAND1 200g Precision Balance<br /><br />My instinct tells me to change things to include brands as its useful to the customer and should have an SEO benefit, but to leave out product codes as they are accessible to the customer where they are now and dont make things messy and unreadable.<br /><br />As always, thanks for the input!</p></title>
On-Page Optimization | | ATP0 -
Duplicate biographies across several domains?
Hey Gang, We've built a niche specific, manually edited legal community that is full of unique content. (While it's ultimately a directory, and that is often viewed as a bad word in these times, ours is a curated source that doesn't allow anyone and everyone to join.) We feel comfortable that it passes the sniff test post-panda/penguin, etc., and its doing rather well to date. The question we have is do we really need to create unique biographies for each of our legal members? Some of our competitors simply use the same bio information that the lawyer has on their own website and copies that to their site. The competitors I'm talking about are LARGE, well-respected, extremely successful folks, like FindLaw. Here's an example: Lawyer's website bio FindLaw website bio Both rank, etc., and the FindLaw code doesn't place any restrictions on their content regarding the bio., and it's an obvious exact match. I get that duplicate content is primarily a concern among one's own URL and the pages across a specific domain, using rel-canonical, etc., but what about two different domains that need to supply factual information that can't be altered? Is it anything we should worry ourselves with? Any tags we should insert in our code with regard to the bios? Thanks!!! Wayne
On-Page Optimization | | Wayne760 -
Blog outgoing links to a certain domain?
Hi Mozzers, I am working with a website with very decentralized ownership. There are two different languages, each with a different owner. Owner A keeps linking to crap sites, that hurt the entire site. My question is this: Is there a way - through .htaccess or robots.txt - that Google can be asked NOT to crawl the links to external crap sites? The problem is that Owner B cannot control Owner A's html, and thus not implement rel="nofollow" on links. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | ThomasHgenhaven0 -
How long is too long for domain URL length?
I noticed one of the negatively correlated ranking factors was length of URL. I'm building a page from scratch, we are trying to rank for 'Minneapolis Fitness' and 'Minneapolis Massage'. Is www.minnnepolismassageandfitness.com just ridiculously long? Or does the exact match outweigh the penalty for URL length?
On-Page Optimization | | JesseCWalker2 -
My homepage no longer ranks for a keyword, instead a page from the blog now appears in the results
Hello, Our site used to rank for a specific keyword - "eco products", with a link going to the homepage. However, in the last few weeks, we've noticed that the home page no longer ranks for this keyword, and instead the second result on the page is a link to a catagory page on our blog. I'd be very grateful if anyone had any information about why this might have happened, and what possible steps I could take to remedy the situation. Many thanks, Sophy
On-Page Optimization | | sophycolbert0 -
One domain with keyword optimized pages or multiple domains
Hi There. I have a client in the real estate law services business. Which is better for long term search traffic? 1. A single domain ie. smith and smith law.com with pages focussing on each neighbourhood they operate in ie. .com/real estate law manhattan.php, .com/real estate law brooklyn.php etc or 2. multiple domains each focusing on one neighbourhood the business operates in ie: real estate law manhattan.com, real estate law brooklyn.com etc Thanks for the help, Josh
On-Page Optimization | | dreadmichael0