Vanity URL vs domain URL
-
Hi guys,
Our CEO is having an interview with a known broadcaster on radio. During the interview he will mention a specific URL www.example.com/marketingcampaign that we want track on Google Analytics, therefore behaving like a vanity URL redirecting to the actual URL www.example.com/resources/primary-keyword-2018.
Would this work the same way a vanity URL in terms of tracking or not such as following guideline here ? I am asking because vanity URLs are supposed to be completely different domain name that gets purchased and in our case it is the same domain name just with a different URI.
thanks guys!
-
Hi Taysir
You can catch all the data you need by analysing this URL in analytics: www.example.com/marketingcampaign
Why do you need to 301 somewhere else? It doesn't make any sense.
UTM parameters could only be used if you append an existing URL (eg the homepage) with tracking. for example, if you had an email campaign or Facebook. As yours is aural (listened to on the radio) you wouldn't be able to convey it so it would be useless. Worth noting though.
Regards
Nigel
-
Hi Nigel,
Thanks for your response.
So you're recommending not to 301 redirect www.example.com/marketingcampaign to www.example.com/resources/primary-keyword-2018 but the whole purpose is to capture the listeners who remember this one time URL(this will only be mentioned for this radio show) within Google Analytics. If I don't redirect this URL then I will never know how many radio listeners came to our website, right?
Or am i missing something here?
Finally could you clarify this bit _"You could just use a preferred landing page and use UTM parameters to track in Analytics if you knew which source it was coming from." _What is the setup and how would this work?
Thanks for your time!
-
Hi Taysir
I can understand why you would want to do this and this is a perfectly acceptable way of doing it. However, I'm not sure why you would want to redirect it to another page. Why not just put all the information required on that page www.example.com/marketingcampaign?
There may (depending on who you listen to - I'm with Rand) up to 15% loss of link juice passing through a 301 redirect.
Also by publicising the 'vanity URL' it may well be indexed by Google but then de-indexed in favour of www.example.com/resources/primary-keyword-2018. because of the 301 redirect. When people searched for that page it wouldn't exist!
Intentionally setting up a URL that 301s is just bad practice and you risk Google not respecting it and listing both URLs anyway - so any ranking could go out of the window.
So in conclusion - fine having the 'vanity URL' (as you call it - it's a bit of an old-fashioned expression - any URL these days could be considered a 'vanity URL' - it was in the days when URLs had long strings of numbers and non-relevenat characters) but don't bother 301 redirecting. Use that single URL to provide all the information you need. You will be able to see it in Google analytics along with all of the source data.
(If you do decide to redirect - I wouldn't - do it in the htaccess file as it will all be seamless. Don't do it by java on the 'vanity URL' page. )
You could just use a preferred landing page and use UTM parameters to track in Analytics if you knew which source it was coming from.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en
Regards Nigel
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
-
Subdomain vs Domain
I have a single product website running in a one page layout
Reporting & Analytics | | Roman-Delcarmen
my web have some internal pages such as, terms and conditions, policies and so on.
But in order to get a better ranking I decided to create a blog in the website, but my IT team told me that we can do it but in a subdomain.
The main domain use cakephp with a configuration oriented to security ( we had bad experiences with normal cms or ecommerces) So the structure of the website will this one www.mystore.com for the ecommerce blog.mystore.com for the blog So my questions are:
How is going to affect my seo?
Is there any difference betwen mystore/blog.com vs blog.mystore.com?
Wich is the best option for Google Analitycs / Search Console a single property or 2 properties? If you know some post or tutorial related with my question will be appreciated Thanks Guys1 -
URL Formatting for Internal Link Tagging
After doing some research on internal campaign link tagging, I have seen conflicting viewpoints from analytics and SEO professionals regarding the most effective and SEO-friendly way to tag internal links for a large ecommerce site. It seems there are several common methods of tagging internal links, which can alter how Google interprets these links and indexes the URLs these links point to. Query Parameter - Using ? or & to separate a parameter like cid that will be appended to all internal-pointing links. Since Google will crawl and index these, I believe this method has the potential of causing duplicate content. Hash - Using # to separate a parameter like cid that will be appended to all internal-pointing links. Javascript - Using an onclick event to pass tracking data to your analytics platform Not Tagging Internal Links - While this method will provide the cleanest possible internal link paths for Google and users navigating the site and prevent duplicate content issues, analytics will be less effective. For those of you that manage SEO or analytics for large (1 million+ visits per month) ecommerce sites, what method do you employ and why? Edit* - For this discussion, I am only concerned with tagging links within the site that point to other pages within the same site - not links that come from outside the site or lead offsite. Thank you
Reporting & Analytics | | RobbieFoglia0 -
Google Analytics - Adding a sub-domain
Hi I have a google analytics query.
Reporting & Analytics | | Niki_1
I have a main site with a google analytics tag and I have 2 forms that sit on a subdomain with a different GA code. As I would like to measure end to end tracking, I would like the same GA code on the subdomain. What is the best way for me to implement this? Would I need to make some changes to the GA code that sits on the main site or can I add the the GA code from the main site onto the subdomain? Thanks0 -
Domain redirect for direct mail (source) tracking in Analytics?
We have a client that would like to do some direct mail marketing and the plan is to use a short/simple domain in the marketing materials, which redirects to the main site domain. By default this would show as a referral traffic source in Analytics, right? So any traffic that came through that redirect would be attributed to "shortdomain.com / referral"? Meaning I wouldn't need to do any sort of customized, advanced tracking set up to track conversions that I've already set up (ecomm and goals) and attribute them to this new source? Just double checking that I'm not overlooking something. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | VTDesignWorks0 -
Google Analytics set up for non-canonicalized domains
Our client's website is non-canonicalized (www.example.com & example.com load the same thing). Google seems to have made a preference for the www, but canonicalizing to www breaks their Flash website. All we're really trying to do at this time is install Google Analytics for them. What's the smartest way to make sure that both www.example.com and example.com are treated exactly the same by Google Analytics? Google Developers: Domains & Directories states that by default visit data will be separately collected between the two domains, although I found no references to the common www/naked domain issue. In stackoverflow: Does google analytics combine naked domains with the www subdomain? Török Gábor says, "Yes, users will be tracked, but the same visitor coming from www.datalookups.com and datalookups.com will be counted as two different visitors." On the same page, Open SEO says, "This is completely false: www.domain.tld and domain.tld are treaded just the same, and get the same value for the HASH code (the number at the start of each __utm cookie). This an exception: every other subdomain.domain.tld will be handeld as a distinct web site". Can any Analytics experts help me sort this out? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | GOODSIR0 -
Google Analytics: Do url redirects show up
Good Morning from 6 degrees c mostly cloudy wetherby UK 🙂 A redirect has been set up with the effect that when you key in www.hyload.co.uk it forwards to www.ikogroup.co.uk My question is please...within Google analytics will referall traffic from www.hyload.co.uk show up in referral traffic or because its a redirect will it be counted as direct traffic. Thanks in advance, David
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing0 -
How to find out which URLs are NOT indexed on a site
Is there a way to easily find out which URLs on a store-type site are NOT being indexed in Google? For example, if my sitemap information in Google Webmaster tools shows I have 7342 URLs in my sitemap and 5699 of those indexed, how do I find out what the 1643 non-indexed URLS are? Thanks for any help!
Reporting & Analytics | | GregWalt0 -
Google URL Builder Extension showing up as indexed pages.
Hello, I was reviewing my PRO member campaign report. I see that I am getting warnings for too long of URLs. However, these URLs are my website URL with the Google URL builder tracking code that I set up for my marketing campaings. Why are these being indexed? For example: www.website.com/?utm_source=Oct+Newsletter&utm_medium=e.... Thank you, Kristen
Reporting & Analytics | | KLFeichtner0