How important is keyword usage in the URL?
-
Hi,
We have a client who has engaged us recently for some SEO work and most of their website looks pretty good seo-wise already. Many of their site pages rank at the top or middle of page two for their targeted keywords. In many cases they are not using the targeted keyword in the URL and most pages could use some additional on-page clean up. My question is, is it worth it to re-write the URLs to include the targeted keyword and then do 301 redirects to send the old pages to the new ones in order to improve the ranking? Or should we just do the minor on page work in hopes that this will be enough to improve the rankings and push them on to the first page. Thanks. -
Appreciate the response. Will test this on a few pages and see if it leads to better results. Thanks.
-
I usually advise against changing URL structure for an established site, but keywords in the URL do have some impact. A good approach would be to test re-writing the URLs for a couple of pages and see if it has an impact. If the change is positive, then roll it out across more pages.
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
-
Something weird is happening with this keyword?!
Hey guys,
Technical SEO | | CongthanhThe
In the past weeks, i was ranking #4 for a keyword and as a result, I was getting a lot of traffic and I made some unremarkable modifications to page content and reindexed it.
after that, i noticed a drop in traffic, and when i checked it out, i noticed that the page is not ranking for that keyword anymore, it's no longer in the search engine (not even in page 15).
The funny thing is that if i add any letter to the main keyword (for example "Keyword" c) and search for it, my page ranks #1.
It's as if google bots are avoiding to rank my page for that main keyword only.
Ps: I didn't make any black hat SEO for that page or my website in general. No issues with other keywords i reindexed the page several times and what i noticed, is that in the first 4 hours i restore my ranking whit that keyword but after a while, the same problem occurs (My site disappears from the search engine)
If you have any idea about this issue, i will be grateful if you could help.
Thanks in advance0 -
Some URLs in the sitemap not indexed
Our company site has hundreds of thousands of pages. Yet no matter how big or small the total page count, I have found that the "URLs Indexed" in GWMT has never matched "URLS in Sitemap". When we were small and now that we have a LOT more pages, there is always a discrepancy of ~10% or so missing from the index. It's difficult to know which pages are not indexed, but I have found some that I can verify are in the Sitemap.xml file but not at all in the index. When I go to GWMT I can "Fetch and Render" missing pages fine - it's not as though it's blocked or inaccessible. Any ideas on why this is? Is this type of discrepancy typical?
Technical SEO | | Mase0 -
Keywords, when are you overdoing it in the URL?
Hi guys, I'm auditing a site covering compensation for cancer. Keywords could include: Undiagnosed cancer 20 cancer compensation 10 undiagnosed cancer symptoms 10 cancer misdiagnosis claims 20 cancer claims 10 misdiagnosis of cancer 50 cancer misdiagnosis 70 So, when structuring the URL for the category, this was previously selected: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis Although sub-pages appear like this: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ 'Cancer misdiagnosis' as a keyword attracts the most traffic, but if we're using it on sub-pages - is there a need to include it twice on all sub-page URLs? With that in mind, would it be better to follow the following format? www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ Or is there a better way to structure this? Thanks in advance guys!
Technical SEO | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Temporary Redirect - on nonexistant URL
I'm getting a Temporary Redirect issue on | http://www.luckygemstones.com/botswana-legends.htm http://www.luckygemstones.com/botswana-legends.htm | http://www.luckygemstones.com/page-not-found.htm | 1 | 0 | 302 | YET! There is no such page on my site. I believe I had one once, but has been corrected for a while now. WHY is SEOMOZ picking this up as an error and how can I fix? Kathleen http://www.luckygemstones.com
Technical SEO | | spkcp1110 -
Friendly URLS (SEO urls)
Hello, I own a eCommerce site with more than 5k of products, urls of products are : www.site.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=61_87&product_id=266 Im thinking about make it friend to seo site.com/category/product-brand Here is my question,will I lost ranks for make that change? Its very important to me know it Thank you very much!
Technical SEO | | matiw0 -
How can I see the SEO of a URL? I need to know the progress of a specific landing-page of my web. Not a keyword, an url please. Thanks.
I need to know the evolution on SEO of a specific landing-page (an URL) of my web. Not a keyword, a url. Thanks. (Necesito saber si es posible averiguar el progreso de una URL específica en el posicionamiento de Google. Es decir, lo que hace SEOmoz con las palabras clave pero al revés. Yo tengo una url concreta que quiero posicionar en las primeras posiciones de Google pero quiero ver cómo va progresando en función a los cambios que le voy aplicando. Muchas gracias)
Technical SEO | | online_admiral0 -
Old URL redirect to New URL
Alright I did something dumb a year a go and I'm still paying for it. I changed my hyphenated URL to the non-hyphenated version when I redesigned my website. I say it was dumb because I lost most of my link juice even though I did 301 redirects (via the htaccess file) for almost all of the pages I could find in Google's index. Here's my problem. My new site took a huge hit in traffic (down 60%) when I made the change and even though I've done thousands of redirects my old site is still showing up in the SERPS and send much if not most of my traffic. I don't want to take the old site down in fear it will kill all of my traffic. What should I do? Is there a better method I should explore then 301 redirects? Could the other site be affecting my current rank since it's still there? (FYI...both sites are built on the WP platform). Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated. Thank you! Joe
Technical SEO | | kaje0 -
Is this keyword strategy totally wrong?
I have a Driving School website www.1stclassdriving.co.uk. The site is structured geographically with one page per Area
Technical SEO | | Brian_Worger
(post code) and one page per Driving Instructor. There are links from each Area page to the instructors
working in the Area. The principal search keyword that I want to optimise on is
"Driving Lessons" The thinking was to target each individual Area page for
"Driving lessons in xxx" where xxx is the particular geographic area
and each particular Instructor to "Driving Lessons in yyy" where yyy
is the main town . The ideal would be that a search on "Driving
Lessons" would pick up the root page - search on an area, say "Driving
Lessons in Croydon" would pick up the Croydon area page and a search on a
town, say "Driving lessons in Mitcham" would pick up the Instructor
that covered that town page. However having read Rebeccas Keyword research guide I am
concerned that this strategy is wrong because of the volume of pages that use
"Driving Lessons in xxxx". Does this fall foul of "Keyword cannibalization" ?
and if so what is the best way of being able to achieve our objective?0