Keyword Phrase in URL structure
-
Wondered the best URL structure, to include a major keyword phrase. Our clients' case is that their domain name is not the main keyword. So should we include the keyword phrase in the URL structure to list all their office locations:
A - www.website.com/anxiety-treatment/denver/1001
or
B - www.website.com/denver/1001Would this be considered keyword stuffing? We'd like "A" above to rank for keyword phrases related to "anxiety treatment denver", etc.
-
Hi Rebecca -
Thanks for the fast reply! In my example, how would you structure the "find a business" URL's vs. the "specific business location page" URL:
website.com/anxiety-treatment/co/denver
- to browse a directory
- to allow users to work backwards to find a location in another city
website.com/johnson-anxiety-treatment-center-denver-co
- as the link to the one specific office in denver named "Johnson Anxiety Treatment Center"?
Do you feel that the specific office page needs to be in the same URL structure as the browse a directory? If so then it would be super long like this:
website.com/anxiety-treatment/co/denver/johnson1001Appreciate your thoughts & reply.
-
Hi Bernie,
Having just completed a silo-structure site for a client which featured exactly this problem, I can tell you that this is not going to help with rankings unless you are featuring multiple locations with similar keywords/services.
In our case, the client (a physiotherapy clinic) has 3 separate locations which all provide the same services. In this case, we instituted a keyword phrase for local SEO into the URL structure. Example:
www.brand.com/city1/city1-physiotherapy
www.brand.com/city2/city2-physiotherapy
www.brand.com/city3/city3-physiotherapyThis gives it a bit of extra relevancy for the keyphrase "city1 physiotherapy" or "physiotherapy city1", but that is where the URL structure-keyword benefits end. We did it because the client wanted to specifically target a single keyword phrase at the cost of targeting other phrases. If you are okay with that result, then this works great. In your case, the result could be a domain that reads:
www.website.com/denver-anxiety-treatment/1001
or, if you have multiple locations:
www.website.com/denver/anxiety-treatment/1001
www.website.com/boulder/anxiety-treatment/1001I should point out that these are relatively minor ranking factors, and that you are probably better off focusing on major issues like your link profile, content marketing and website health rather than the URL structure. This is becoming less and less important to search engines and the benefits you gain from them generally aren't worth the time you invest.
Anyways, hope this helps and feel free to get in touch if you need help or clarifcation.
All the best,
Rob
-
It wouldn't be considered keyword stuffing, but the benefit of adding the keyword may be lost by the fact that you've made your URL longer and buried the pages another level down in the subdirectory structure. It's a nice bit of readability, but my guess is it's not going to have much impact on ranking.
For me, the relative neutrality of it and the low risk means that I'd consider user experience the deciding factor. Google will display the URL in any SERPs you rank in, and having the keyword visible there is probably a good thing for the searcher.
Check out Rand's post about structuring URLs (particularly #3).
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
-
Canonical URL on frontpage
I have a site where the CMS system have added a canonical URL on my frontpage, pointing to a subpage on my site. Something like on my domain root.Google is still showing MyDomain.com as the result in the search engines which is good, but can't this approach hurt my ranking? I mean it's basically telling google that my frontpage content is located far down the hierarki, instead of my domain root, which of course have the most authority.
Technical SEO | | EdmondHong87
Something seems to indicate that this could very well be the case, as we lost several placements after moving to this new CMS system a few months ago.0 -
Question on URL wording and structure best practices
We're mapping out some URL structures and trying to figure out what would be best for separating folders for articles and videos regarding wording in the folder say: www.site.com/category/article/name-of-article/id#/ ---- www.site.com/category/video/name-of-video/id#/ vs. www.site.com/category/a/name-of-article/id#/ ---- www.site.com/category/v/name-of-video/id#/ Second option came about the ''shorter is better' way of thinking. Downside I see to it is if the link would be copied and pasted somewhere probably would be best for a user to make it clear they are clicking into an article or a video, don't think just an 'a' or a 'v' would be very telling in that scenario. Would it be better for search engines to make it clearer with the whole word in there? Any other pros and cons to each? Not sure what's the best route here.
Technical SEO | | SBRMarketing0 -
How important is keyword usage in the URL?
Hi,
Technical SEO | | Whebb
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.0 -
Title Tags & Url Structure
So I'm working on a website for a client in the Tourism Industry. We've got a comprehensive list of museums & other attractions in a number of cities that have to go online. And we have to come up with the correct url structure, title tags and obviously content. My current line of thought was to work the urls in the following way. http://domain.com/type-of-attraction/city/name-of-attraction/ This is mainly because we think that the type of attraction is far more important then the city (SEO wise) as the country as a whole receives more searches, however we require a city in the url to make it unique because some attractions across cities happen to share names and we don't want to have the names of attractions littered with city names. However for title-tags I wanted to go the other way around, again due to the attraction type being more important then the city. Name of Attraction - Type of Attraction - City - Brand Name or Name of Attraction - Type of Attraction in City - Brand Name I am quite confident in working it this way; however I would appreciate if I receive some feedback on this structure, you think its good or you would make any suggestions / alterations. One last thing, There's the possibility of having many urls ending up with the same city names (For each type of attraction) I would think that just providing a list of links & duplicate text is not enough; would you suggest a canonical pointing to a link containing just information on the city? and using the other pages for user-navigation only? or should i set variables in the text which are replaced by the types of attraction so that the text looks different for each one?
Technical SEO | | jonmifsud0 -
One Keyword Penalty
Hi There, Quick question for everyone. Is it possible to get penalized a keyword level not page level. I have a site that only seems to be penalized on one keyword which is currently at page 22, whilst the rest are on page 1 or page 2. I came to the site late so I have no idea when the site lost its ranking for this keyword after a site redesign but the onpage is almost the same. Kind Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
How to structure sub catergorys
due to out database each sub category has to be assigned to a category. i.e. /abc would have to be assigned to the category ''letters' in the url structure; so...it would be www.example.com/letters/abc . The question is does is matter which way round the category and sub are arranged? Assuming we are optimizing for ''abc' , does it matter if we structured as; www.example.com/letters/abc www.example.com/abc/letters Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | jg1000 -
URL Structure "-" vs "/"? Are there any advantages to one over the other?
An example would be domain.com/keyword/keyword2 vs domain.com/keyword-keyword2 Are there any advantages / disadvantages to one over the other?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Should I repeat keywords at each folder level of my urls?
Hey Guys, I'm wondering which URL is preferable when targeting the keyword phrase "ski goggles" a) http://www.evo.com/shop/ski/ski-goggles.aspx or b) http://www.evo.com/shop/ski/goggles.aspx URL a includes the keyword phrase exactly with a dash but also repeats the word "ski" and feels redundant. Any research/ testing to support either case? Thanks a bunch. Will
Technical SEO | | evoNick0