Some SEO 2016 questions
-
Hello MOZ Community,
I have some questions where the following is still working for seo in 2016:
- Is an exact keyword in the domain still a good start?
- If a domain contains the most important keyword does one still need subfolders with that keyword in the url?
- Do you need multiple subpages so the main url becomes stronger?
- Is linkbuilding still the number one factor?
Thank you for your thoughts!
-
Thank you.
These are some good answers for me.
I will focus on brand building and kickass content!
-
All of these questions will draw different opinions from different people.
Sometimes contrary opinion is most valuable.
Is an exact keyword in the domain still a good start?
If you mean... EgolsWidgets.com... then, widgets in your domain name isn't worth much. But if you have a site about brass widgets with BrassWidgets.com as the domain... then the domain will be slightly helpful. Exact match is what you need. Partial match is worth little to nothing.
If a domain contains the most important keyword does one still need subfolders with that keyword in the url?
If this is worth anything at all, it is not worth much. If I own BrassWidgets.com, I am not going to have a folder named /brass-widgets/
Do you need multiple subpages so the main url becomes stronger?
Huh? If you want a good website you will probably need a lot of subpages. That is called "content".
Is linkbuilding still the number one factor?
No. KICKASS content is the number one factor. "Content" isn't worth much at all unless it is KICKASS. If you make a website with crappy content then who is going to link to it, who is going to read it, who is going to do anything with it.
If you don't have kickass content then you will be forced to pay a linkbuilder and he will have to perform some type of sin to get people to links to your crappy website.
-
Thank you for responding.
I was trying to get some "almost" exact keyword matches combined with lots of weak backlinks to rank for some affiliate marketing sites, but it does nothing.
And your answers clearly show why.
Thanks again.
-
Thank you for responding and your helpfull answers.
It really seems that shortcuts are not helping and brand building is the way to go.
-
Hi mhenze,
Will answer to the best of my ability:
- Exact match still a good start?
It depends on what the brand of the website/business you're working on is. This one was answered well in Q&A in December of 2015 with the following:
"If your "brand" is going to be "Region Family Holidays" then an EMD is fine. Just make sure you're branded that way, and try to cultivate a variety of natural backlinks. If your brand is "Acme Travel UK" and the site is regionfamilyholidays.co.uk then you'll be fighting a losing battle."
Here's the link: https://moz.com/community/q/exact-match-domain-should-i-use-one
Long story short, the value of EMD's lessens as your brand diverges from the keywords you're targeting. If you are branding based on keywords you're targeting, then you're still in good shape.
-
Kind of related to the first question - it depends on what your brand is. I would stay away from the EMD/keywords discussion and just focus on producing solid content targeting keywords. It's the safest way to go and it gets results in my experience. It's a small piece of the pie compared to your link profile and properly optimized content/site structure.
-
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking here. Subpages don't really add strength to the main URL (in fact, it works in reverse). Subpages are great for ranking additional keywords or if you have multiple products or services that are not related to one another and you want to keep your services separated for SEO purposes. Your main URL will be strong if you can generate sufficient links and provide excellent resources to your visitors.
-
According to Moz's 2015 Search Engine Ranking Factors Survey, links are still the #1 factor when it comes to rankings.
Link is here: https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
Granted this survey was based on 2015 factors and your question revolves around 2016, but the factors have not changed significantly in this time and it is doubtful there will be anything game-changing in 2016 (at least not for a few months).
This doesn't mean links are the be-all and end-all of rankings, but many very smart people seem to think they are still a big factor. Make sure you are following best practices, make sure your link profile is natural and whatever you do, don't spam or buy links for your sites and you should do just fine.
-
Greetings. I'll start this one off!
First and foremost, I have to point you to the 2015 Ranking Factors. They haven't change that much and it is really the best reference out there for all of these questions.
1. I say yes with a giant BUT...you have balance branding with that nifty keyword domain name. My personal experience is not all is lost on keywords in the domain as some will tell you, but I'd only do it IF there is no significant loss to your brand.
2. Keep the URL as short as possible.
3. Not sure what you mean here. A well structured website with quality content will give you the best results, so I'm leaning towards yes on this one.
4. Short answer is Yes. That and great content. See the 2015 Ranking Factors.
Good luck.
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
-
Domain forwarding or redirects for SEO?
Hi all! A client of mine owns several top level domains which are not in use, let's call them example.nu, example.de, example.net and so on. The current website is example.com.
Technical SEO | | JHultqvist
When checking the technical status of the unused domains I realized that all but one are forwarded (via DNS) to example.com and only one has a 301 redirect. Should I redirect all of them by means of 301 or let them stay forwarded? Very few of the domains have any other sites linking to them. Any thoughts would be really appreciated! Jesper0 -
Magento technical SEO issues
Hi This is lots of questions and don't expect full answers but if anyone can help or put me in touch with some who can that would be great so here are 3 issues we have from some auditing our site Firstly on pages like https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/shop-with-us/sort-by/price/sort-direction/desc so any pages where there is a sortby the cananoical link doesn't seem to be working correctly. So for here it is https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/shop-with-us/sort-by/price/sort-direction/desc"/> but should be https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/shop-with-us"/> secondly with have a lot of duplicate title tags mainly caused from the blog and the above problem see-> http://prntscr.com/b2t9xe but regarding the blog we have an issue where 2 canonical appearing for example this page
Technical SEO | | tidybooks
https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/blog/page/19/ there are 2 canonical links appearing https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/blog/page/19/"/> we want it to be this
https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/blog/"/> Thirdly
Our mobile usability issues have gone up a lot see- > http://prntscr.com/b2tado
I can see what the issue is that this folder https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/skin/frontend/tidybooks/default/images/ was being crawled by google and contains lots of 'index of' pages. I've disallowed directory in robots.txt as shown here -> http://prntscr.com/b2tbc5 is that correct? any help would be great Just to let you know we use magento v1.7 we use SEO suite ultimate extension and we use fishpigs wordpress extension thanks0 -
Sitemap question
Hello, In your opinion what is better for a root domain and micro-sites using sub-domains?, to have a single sitemap for the root domain including all links to the sub-domains or to have a separate sitemap for each sub-domain? Thanks Arnold
Technical SEO | | arnoldwender0 -
Mobile or Responsive canonical question?
Hi guys We are in the process of expanding and are moving our site to magento enterprise. Today we met with a company pitching a seperate mobile site. While Im al for a mobile site in terms of look and user experience, from an seo point i dont believe and "m." domain is the best idea. However if we were to go with a mobile site, would adding canonical tags to the mobile urls pointing to the desktop urls be useful? For example m.trespass.co.uk/category-page has the canonical tag pointing to trespass.co.uk/category-page Im looking for someone who has direct experience wth this situation for one of their clients. Thanks Robert
Technical SEO | | Trespass0 -
Canonical Question
Can someone please help me with a question, I am learning about Canonical URls at the moment and have had some errors come up, it is saying ```![Priority 1](http://try.powermapper.com/Reports/89db420a-2cf2-46dc-bae4-543efbefc241/report/Report/p1.png)This page has multiple rel=canonical tags.Line 9 Best Practice[![](http://try.powermapper.com/Reports/89db420a-2cf2-46dc-bae4-543efbefc241/report/Report/dropbox.png)](http://try.powermapper.com/Reports/89db420a-2cf2-46dc-bae4-543efbefc241/report/res/2.view.htm#)![Help](http://try.powermapper.com/Reports/89db420a-2cf2-46dc-bae4-543efbefc241/report/Report/help.png)Search engine behavior is unpredictable when a page has multiple canonical tags. <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.finalduties.co.uk/" /><link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Final Duties – Low cost probate RSS Feed" href="http://www.finalduties.co.uk/feed/" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Final Duties – Low cost probate Atom Feed" href="http://www.finalduties.co.uk/feed/atom/" /><link rel="pingback" href="http://www.finalduties.co.uk/xmlrpc.php" />That canonical link to Feed? should that be there, I know the Plugin has done this but I am lost to what should be there, I have no duplicate pages as far as I am aware than needs a canonical URL ??Thanks ``` >
Technical SEO | | Chris__Chris0 -
Redirection Impact on SEO
Need help urgently. There is the situation [This is how is it working now]: 1. Have a global landing page [say when user types in www.mysite.com - takes user to the global landing page: [www.mysite.com/global/en.html]](http://www.mysite.com/global/en.html] ) 2. Users from this landing page can select a country on his/her choice and get redirected say: [www.mysite.com/us/en.html] Would like to change the functionality as below: 1. When user types in www.mysite.com 1a. Would find the location of the request based on GEO IP and if the request is coming from North America region then would redirect the users to: www.mysite.com/us/en.html 1b. If the request is from any other location/region then it would continue to work as it is currently working: take the user to the global landing page: www.mysite.com/global/en.html Would this change have any negative impact or not found by search engines from SEO perspective? If it does then what are the impacts and if does not then why not. If it does then what is the best possible way to address this request. Appriciate your help. Thanks, Koushik Roy
Technical SEO | | KoushikRoy0 -
Are affiliate programs good for seo?
We found this website https://shareasale.com/learnmore.cfm Actually is an affiliate site, where the users there would be in charge of driving traffic into our website, and then we pay them in some way, I just wanted to know if this can affect my seo efforts negativele? THanks
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Video question
If another company hosts our videos, but they are only found embedded on our site, do we get all of the SEO benefits from the video, or would we have to host it for that to happen?
Technical SEO | | ClaytonKendall0