Exact keyword URL or not?
-
Hi all,
I have a quick question about the proper use of permalinks.
Let's say that I have a website about sports and I want to create an internal page dedicated to shoes. I know that the keyword "shoe" has 15.000 monthly visits, while the keyword "shoes" has 1.000 monthly visits. How do I have to name the internal page? http://www.example.com/shoe or http://www.example.com/shoes (with a final 's')?
I would think that by naming the URL http://www.example.com/shoes, the search engine would consider that page for the keywords "shoe" and "shoes", but I am not sure about it. Should I create a URL that only focuses on one specific keyword ("shoe", in this example) or a URL that may encompass more than one keyword ("shoe" and "shoes")?
I hope this is clear. Thank you for your time and help.
All best,
- Sal
-
Thank you for your feedback. It helps.
All best,
- S.
-
From my experience targeting the higher traffic term usually captures traffic/rankings for the lower traffic term aswell, since they are both related.
I would go with "shoe" however optimise the content for both shoe & shoes. In addition you would need to build links for both terms, so that you can improve the ranking for both terms.
Hope this helps.
V
-
I can help by giving you an example and its actual results.
I hope this helps.
On our site, for a certain word, just like in your case, the page is named let's say www.example.com/real-examples
When you search for "real examples" it is in top 10 but if you search for "real example" then it is not even in top 50.
I still don't think on-page adjustments decide the rankings on themselves as there are more factors involved.
Anyway, I hope this helps you a bit.
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
-
Should you shorten very long URLs?
Hi Moz Community! If the nav architecture URL is long, like this: https://www.savewildlife.org/wildlife-conservtion/endangered-species-act-protections/endangered-species-list/birds/mexican-spotted-owl can I and should I shorten that new destination URL to make it easy for Google to see that the page topic is really the owl, like this: https://savewildlife.org/endangered-species-list/mexican-spotted-owl Thank you! Jane
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CalamityJane771 -
Keyword rank and redirecting
I'm creating a new amazon affiliate site. I've researched other successful sites. I've noticed that they are ranking for 1000s of keywords, but many of these long tail keywords are redirected back to a main page. I can see how this can reduce the overall total amount of content pages on the site. How are you able to rank for the keyword in the first place if the the page is redirected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lkomontt760 -
Redirecting to Modal URLs
Hi everyone! Long time no chat - hope you're all well! I have a question that for some reason is causing me some trouble. I have a client that is creating a new website, the process was a mess and I am doing a last minute redirect file for them (long story, for another time). They have different teams for different business categories, so there are multiple staff pages with a list of staffers, and a link to their individual pages. Currently they have a structure like this for their staff bios... www.example.com/category-staff/bob-johnson/ But now, to access the staffers bio, a modal pops up. For instance... www.example.com/category-staff/#bob-johnson Should I redirect current staffers URLs to the staff category, or the modal URL? Unfortunately, we are late in the game and this is the way the bio pages are set up. Would love thoughts, thanks so much guys!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PatrickDelehanty0 -
Best url structure
I am making a new site for a company that services many cities. I was thinking a url structure like this, website.com/keyword1-keyword2-keyword3/cityname1-cityname2-cityname3-cityname4-cityname5. Will this be the best approach to optimize the site for the keyword plus 5 different cities ? as long as I keep the total url characters under the SeoMoz reccomended 115 characters ? Or would it be better to build separate pages for each city, trying to reword the main services to try to avoid dulpicate content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
Subdirectory URLs
If I have category pages for my site; is it better to use http://example.com/category/category or just http://example.com/category? Also, I'm creating a new section of the site; a resource center. Should the URLs of the pages in the resource center be http://example.com/learn/page or just http://example.com/page What are the reasons for the better choice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0 -
How to Target Keyword Permutations
I have a client that wants to rank for a keyword phrase that has many permutations.. ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort", "Hill Country Resort Alaska", "Hill Country Alaska Resort" But I'm wondering if I should target these all on the same page or not. I'm assuming all of these permutations are actually valid searches because I did my keyword research for 'exact match' keywords and got results like this.. (let me know if I'm missing something here, or if this sounds right) [Alaska Hill Country Resort] - 230 Local Searches [Hill Country Resort Alaska] - 140 Local Searches [Hill Country Alaska Resort] - 30 Local Searches The phrase we're targeting is their main keyword phrase, so I've chosen their home-page as the page to rank for this phrase. My thought is to optimize for the most popular phrase (ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort"), and sprinkle in the other phrases throughout the copy. Next I would run a link-building campaign targeting the main phrase first.. then the next phrase, and so on, so that my anchor text is more heavily focused on the more popular terms, but I would also make sure to include the less popular terms. Do you think this is the best way to go about this? Do I really need to make individual pages for each of the permutations, or is it okay to target them all on one page since they are essentially the same keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Spammy? Long URLs
Hi All: Is it true that URLs such as this following one are viewed as "spammy" (besides being too long) and that such URLs will negatively affect ranks for keywords and page ranks: http://www.repairsuniverse.com/ipod-parts-ipod-touch-replacement-repair-parts-ipod-touch-1st-gen-replacement-repair-parts.html My thinking is that the page will perform better once it is 301 redirected to a shorter page name, such as: http://www.repairsuniverse.com/ipod-touch-1G-replacement-parts.html It also appears that these long URLs are also more likely to break, creating unnecessary 404s. <colgroup><col width="301"></colgroup> Thanks for your insight on this issue!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | holdtheonion0 -
Rewriting dynamic urls to static
We're currently working on an SEO project for http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/. After a crawl of their site, tons of duplicate content issues came up. We think this is largely down to the use of their brand filtering system, which works like this: By clicking on a brand, the site generates a url with the brand keywords in, for example: http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/3-season-synthetic-cid77.html filtered by the brand Mammut becomes: http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/3-season-synthetic-Mammut-cid77.html?filter_brand=48 This was done by a previous SEO agency in order to prevent duplicate content. We suspect that this has made the issue worse though, as by removing the dynamic string from the end of the URL, the same content is displayed as the unfiltered page. For example http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/3-season-synthetic-Mammut-cid77.html shows the same content as: http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/3-season-synthetic-cid77.html Now, if we're right in thinking that Google is unlikely to the crawl the dynamic filter, this would seem to be the root of the duplicate issue. If this is the case, would rewriting the dynamic URLs to static on the server side be the best fix? It's a Windows Server/asp site. I hope that's clear! It's a pretty tricky issue and it would be good to know your thoughts. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0