Breadcrumb wording and keywords
-
This is real estate website related. For every neighborhood I have a "condos" and "houses" page. In the breadcrumb structure I may have: "home > island condos > city condos > region condos > neighborhood condos". Questions:
-
Some breadrumb structures have 5-6 different breadcrumb link and repeating the word "condos" in each link seems redundant. Would it be better just to list "island", "city", "region", "neighborhood" and never use the word "condos" or "houses" in the breadcrumbs? For users this would be better.
-
If I implement what I suggest in 1) - deleting "condos" or "houses" wording from breadcrumb links, then on a condos page the word "region" (as an example) will lead to the "region condos" page whereas the exact same word "region" on a house page will lead to the "region houses" page. This means I will have a situation where the anchor text in breadcrumbs become 100% identical for my "condos" and "houses" pages, however, the they lead to different pages. Is this OK? I have in past been told that when I use internal anchor text, that the link should always leads to the same page. Having same anchor leading to different pages would not be good….is that so?
thank you
-
-
Hi Lee, In my 2nd message I included these URL's:
Hahaione condos pages: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-condos/
Hahaione houses page: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-homes/Obviously, 2 different URL's. Do you have any evidence or detailed blog posts showing that using same wording in breadcrumbs or inter-linking in general to different URL's is OK, as long as the URL and / or H1 clearly shows what the page is about?
Again, my concern comes from the fact that I have been sold if I interlink with the anchor "Example" then I need to make sure "Example" always points to the same landing page, as search engine's otherwise will be left confused. I somehow think this line of thought is outdated, but any evidence or insight to clarify would be helpful
-
No, you do not need to use the word 'condos' in each breadcrumb but it is necessary once in the highest sub-folder possible to prevent duplicate URLs.
Having it as your H1 will indeed be enough for search engines to recognise that for what the page is about, however you will get an extra ranking boost for it appearing in the URL also.
If you leave 'condos' or 'homes' out of your URL all together then you will end up with duplicate URLs as they will both be something like this for both homes and condos:
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
This will break the functionality of your site and you won't rank, of course. The reason I use this example:
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu-condos/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
is because it incorporates 'condos' into the URL whilst keeping the URL as short as possible and using your keyword as close to the top level, which is the most optimized way of doing it for your keywords (Condos in 'location').
Nice, tidy, short and clear URLs that explain what the page is, whilst hitting your keywords are the goal
I currently have two real estate clients with this format for example: www.domain.com/new-homes/location/property/. This usually results in higher ranking for 'new homes in 'location''
If you don't think it works for you that is fine, it isn't a huge deal providing you are succeeding with other ranking factors, but it has had proven success for me in the past.
-
HI Lee, In my opinion changing the URL to include the word "condos" in top level is close to not important. H1 keywords should be much more relevant.
You are saying: Unless top level in URL have the word "condos" in it, then I need to use the word "condos" for the anchor of each breadcrumb, is that what you are saying?In other words, having the word "condos" in top level of URL makes search engines understand it is a condos page and that is why. I am saying, wouldn't search engines based on my H1 which always has the word "condos" perfectly understand this is a condos page and that is reason why using same anchor for breadcrumbs for condos page and houses page is perfectly fine?
-
Oh I see.
If you are keeping the URL structure the same then it would have to be in a different format. As you only have 2 top level folders (Oahu and Honolulu) you could do it like this:
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu-condos/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu-homes/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
You can change all other anchors to 1 word, providing you have different top level anchors such as the example above.
Sorry for the misunderstanding!
-
I do not worry about URL strucuture, my question relates to anchor text in breadcrumbs.
-
should each breadcrumb link be "oahu home" "Honolulu homes" etc etc and for condos "oahu condos" "Honolulu condos" etc etc..OR
-
Should I use just 1 word "oahu" for both the houses pages and the condos page? In which case anchor text becomes identical....
-
-
At the moment it looks like the word condos is necessary as it is only in there once. However the higher up your hierarchy the keyword 'condos' is, the more importance it will have.
I would have it like this:
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/condos/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/homes/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
Search engines would still interpret that these pages were about condos in honolulu etc. because that is the subfolder that they are in.
Search robots read left to right, start to finish just like us, so the higher up your URL structure your target keyword is the better.
Hope this helps.
-
Thank you for the details. Let me give an example and if you could let me know what anchor you'd put in the breadcrumbs that would be great:
Hahaione condos pages:
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-condos/
Hahaione houses page: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-homes/
Thank you
-
I think you would be correct to take the word condos out of all of your lower level pages, Providing your top level page has 'condos'. The shorter the URL the better and having condos repeated when a search bot would know it has gone into the condos category already would not add any value.
Having the same URL structure after your top level page is fine as it is within a different category. If it is the exact same page however, make sure your canonicals are correct and functional.
There are many ways you can use internal anchor text. I do agree that you shouldn't have the same anchor text pointing to different pages when you are linking from the main body text, but in a navigation menu it is fine. If I had my choice based on the structure above I might do it something like Home > Condos > Island > City > Region > Neighbourhood. That is purely at matter of preference as it would allow for a good cornerstone top level Condos page to rank well and link to.
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 stuffing on category pages - eCommerce site
Hi there fellow Mozzers. I work for a wine company, and I have a theory that some of our category pages are not ranking as well as they could, due to keyword stuffing. The best example is our Champagne category page, which we are trying to rank for the keyword Champagne, currently rank 6ish. However, when I load the page into Moz, it tells me that I might be stuffing, which I am not, BUT my products might be giving both Moz and Google this impression as well. Our product names for any given Champagne is "Champagne - {name}" and the producer is "Champagne {producer name}. Now, on the category pages we have a list of Champagnes, actually 44 Which means that with the way we display them, with both name of the wine, the name of the producer AND the district. That means we have 132 mentions of the word "Champagne" + the content text that I have written. I am wondering, how good is Google at identifying that this is in fact not stuffing, but rather functionality that makes for this high density of the keyword? Is there anything I can do? I mean, we can change it so it's not listed with Champagne on all the products, but I believe it would make the usability suffer a bit, not a lot - but it's a question of balance and I would like to hear if anyone has encountered a similar problem, if it is in fact a problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nikolaj-Landrock2 -
How to rank same page for multiple related keywords
We need some of our pages to rank for multiple related keywords. But we cannot optimise one page for multiple keywords which might end up ranking for none of them; at the same time we cannot optimise it for one keyword as we ignore other keywords. I think creating multiple landing pages for very related keywords will confuse users and search engines as well. How to handle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Organic keyword ranking drops across the board?
Howdy Moz, I have noticed a common anomaly across the majority of my client accounts (see attached image). Have lost thousands of organic keywords worldwide? (no loss in UK rankings though which are the ones that matter) Has there been an algo update? Seems strange. Thanks, Joshua nYP3i
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AscentGroup0 -
Why my website disappears for the keywords ranked, then reappears and so on?
Hello to everyone. In the last 2 weeks my website emorroidi.imieirimedinaturali.it has a strange behavior in SERP: it disappears for the keywords ranked and then reappears, and so on. Here's the chronicle of the last days: 12/6: message in GWT: Improvement of the visibility of the website in search. 12/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked 16/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked with some keywords higher in ranking 18/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked 22/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked 24/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked... I can't explain this situation. Could it be a penalty? What Kind? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emarketer0 -
Replicating keywords in the URL - bad?
Our site URL structure used to be (example site) frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs-for-sale/blue-frogs wherefrogsforsale.com/cute-frogs-for-sale/ was in front of every URL on the site. We changed it by removing the for-sale part of the URL to be frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs/blue-frogs. Would that have hurt our rankings and traffic by removing the for-sale? Or was having for-sale in the URL twice (once in domain, again in URL) hurting our site? The business wants to change the URLs again to put for-sale back in, but in a new spot such as frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs/blue-frogs-for-sale as they are convinced that is the cause of the rankings and traffic drop. However the entire site was redesigned at the same time, the site architecture is very different, so it is very hard to say whether the traffic drop is due to this or not.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Keyword Targeting / Cannibalisation
Hi Guys We're about to launch a very large website for a flooring company and would like to find out more about _key word _cannibalisation - to put my mind at rest. I know Rand posted a Whiteboard Friday early last year about this topic and mentioned using part of the same keyword was ok to use. All our keywords are specifically geared for "user intent" meaning each keyword has relevance and the content to back up the keyword. We've ensured the keywords are located within each url, placed at the start of the page title, h1 etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GaryVictory1 -
Monthly Searches from Google Keyword Planner
I've used Google Adwords, Google Analytics and competitors keywords to compile a master list. I'm now looking to evaluate metrics on the keywords / phrases / long tail phrases. My question is this ... Based on Googles use of Geo Targeting, would I be better to evaluate metrics (Avg. Monthly Searches, Competition, Avg CPC) based on United Kingdom or my local city (I only operate in my local city). I am looking to use the results to redesign my website. I will use the favorable keywords / phrases / long tail keywords to implement a new menu, new content page creation, articles, etc. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
Influence on CTR for high traffic keyword in url and redirect
I currently dominate on my site for a very high traffic keyword. My url contains this keyword in it along with the word "Free" in the beginning. Lets say my keyword is "This Keyword" then my url would be freethiskeyword.com. I rank 3rd for this keyword and generates me about 8k on a low month. I was just able to obtain my main keyword as my sole URL through an auction for a measly 2,000.00. (Very Excited about this). So now I have the URL thiskeyword.com What I want to know is what kind of influence can I expect with my new URL have in CTR. Since it is a high traffic keyword is there a automatic "Trust" factor that is involved and will users tend to click on thiskeyword.com as apposed to freethiskeyword.com? My Second Question I am torn as to what I should do with this new URL. Should I redirect my old URL to my new URL and keep both pointing to the same site? or should I try and dominate my niche and build a new site entirely. Since I currently make about 8k a month for third, if I were to build a separate site and be able to obtain 1st place for my new keyword that would generate me 2 amounts in income based on stats. CTR based on http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2049695/Top-Google-Result-Gets-36.4-of-Clicks-Study freethiskeyword.com = 8k/m for 3rd based on 10% of clicks (currently) thiskeyword.com = 24k/m for 1st based on 36% of clicks (in theory) If I keep each site separate and be able to have one site at 3rd and the other at 1st then I would be making about 32k a month. If I redirect my old url to my new url then I would only have 1st place (if I make it to first of course) and that would only make me 24k a month. It seems to me I should keep these sites separate to generate more income. I am torn what I should do. Also with the EMD penalty I am afraid to 301 my site to my new URL since it is my exact keyword as apposed to my current one. I am defiantly branded as "Free This Keyword" so moving it to thiskeyword.com could hurt me more than help (at least I think so) What you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cbielich0