Placement of key words in URL
-
I notice that the MOZ Page Grader considers "/keyword1/keyword2-keyword3" in a URL string to be less effective than "/keyword1-keyword2-keyword3". Is this correct from Google's perspective?
If I am trying to maximise my SEO for the page title "Business building tips", for example, does Google think my URL is more relevant if it's in the form:
1. www.website.com/business-building-tips
2. www.website.com/business/building-tips or
3. www.website.com/business/business-building-tipsMy instinct tells me 3 is more powerful, but logic tells me if I have a whole section devoted to "business" and one of those pages is "business building tips" then 2 should work just as well, possibly better?
-
Maybe the real question is why On-Page Grader is so limited in its ability to assess URLs, page titles, etc. I don't believe the tool behaves at all like Google in its assessment of content, so I wonder about using it at all. What do others use?
-
URL best practices aside, know that the On-Page Grader only recognizes a tracked keyword when it appears exactly as it was entered into your Moz campaign. It's not actually any sort of commentary on what Google considers more effective from a URL structure standpoint.
Personally, I would also choose variant 2.
-
I would chose variant 2. Less for an omnious Ranking Boost and more for segmentation of the site. With a subdirectory like /business/ you can analyse the behaviour in that content/business section much better than if you just put everything in a "no-subdirectory url".
No subdirectories are, imo, only useful if you have no clear sections or topics - or a single one defined by the domain.
As Marcus Miller mentioned, this has the added benefit of making sense in a vacuum. At least in my opinion.
Nico
-
Marcus has given you some good pointers there and while there does appear to be a small benefit in putting your keywords into a URL, it isn't something I would change just to do so.
In terms of how should a URL look, it depends on what makes the most sense for the products / pages. If you have a shop, then you might want to break it down to categories and products - if not, then a flat structure will probably work better.
Keep is straightforward, informative but never stuff it for the sake of trying. Shorter URL's are better where you can, but don't aim for a short one if it misses the point.
-Andy
-
Totally agree witb Marcus, since I also believe that is still a ranking factor, maybe even higher than the 1% mentioned above, especially for low ranking keywords!
The 1st structure would be my way of doing things and this is how I teach other to do, rather than using subfolders.
But is also good to remember the user (who may prefer shorter URL since a study showed he may feel safer). I like in this cases to use the phrase Matt Cutts said few years back: "More is not better any more"
-
Hey
I believe Matt Cutts once said that keywords in a URL help a "little bit" (1). That was like back in 2009 though so whether that is still a direct factor in the algorithm who knows. If so it would only be a 1% thing.
Looking at your three options I would be staggered if there was any ranking difference between the three of them. Personally I like #1 best if you have no specific business section on the site and #2 if you do have a business section with other articles on the site. #3 looks a bit spammy and over long (for SEO's sake only).
Ultimately though this is the wrong way to look at things - you need to look at things the way Google wants us to look at things and do what is best for your user. You want a URL that clearly indicates what the page is about and that would look good pasted into a blog post or forum or some such. You want a URL that looks the part in
You then want to make sure that everything else is helping clearly illustrate what this page is about:
- URL (our entry point)
- Page Title
- Internal Navigation / Anchors
- Breadcrumb if used
- H1 tags
- Page content
- Domain level keyword content
- External links if relevant / possible / quality etc
This is just such a tiny thing overall that I really would not sweat it - do what is right for your users and what makes most sense and the SEO aspects will take care of themselves.
Hope that helps
MarcusReferences
1. http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-keywords-in-the-url-16976
-
What prompted my question is that sometimes the MOZ page grader discounts our URL for not having keywords in it even though the keywords are one step back in the path (as in example 2 above).
-
Hi Tony,
First of all keyword in URL doesn't helps in ranking boost so don't worry about that . I would suggest you to go with first option.
Thanks
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
-
Create 100% new content in existing page/URL?
We have about 30 pages of content that we are hiding from the website as these articles had some issues. If these pages ranked well, would you recommend that the new content is written within these pages? Meaning, we would replace the content that's in those pages with the same topic and keywords. Or do you think it's best to start a new page instead?
On-Page Optimization | | kvillalobos0 -
Change of URL + SEO Impact
We recently changed the URLs from our site http://www.website.com (old)
On-Page Optimization | | ederdesign
https://website.com/us/en/ (new) Our ranking is plummeting every since and I wonder if the new URL had something to do with it. Do you know if that change, could have impacted the ranking?0 -
Need advice on the better URL structure to go with
I am rebuilding our existing website on a new platform and need advice on which URL structure would be the most ideal. The following examples are of a product that we have with a very long page title. Not all of our products have titles this long, but enough of them do to cause some concern. I was also wondering if I should end the url with file type .html or if leaving it out is better. Thanks in advance! OPTION 1. this example just uses the root domain and the entire product title separated by dashes http://ewheels.nextmp.net/staggered-full-set-br-2-20x9-ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed-br-2-20x10-5-ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed OPTION 2. this example uses the crawl path as well as the entire product title http://ewheels.nextmp.net/wheels/ace-alloy-wheels/ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed/staggered-full-set-br-2-20x9-ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed-br-2-20x10-5-ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed OPTION 3. this example uses the crawl path and just the part number at the end since the folders already contain all the keywords necessary http://ewheels.nextmp.net/wheels/ace-alloy-wheels/ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed/ace-2090aff01silace-20105aff01sil
On-Page Optimization | | elementmotor0 -
Google is indexing urls with parameters despite canonical
Hello Moz, Google is indexing lots of urls despite the canonical in my site. Those urls are linked all over the site with parameters like ?, and looks like Google is indexing them despite de canonical. Is Google deciding to index those urls because they are linked all over the site? The canonical tag is well implemented.
On-Page Optimization | | Red_educativa0 -
Blog URL
I know that this question has been asked in the past, and that website.com/blog is better for seo purposes than blog.website.com. We want to setup a custom blog on our site, using Wordpress. Our designers/host are telling us that buy using website.com/blog can causes issues b/c Wordpress is open source, and our site could be hacked? Is there anything we should do about this? Any suggestions? Any Advice appreciated!!! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
Seeking URL Advice
Hey Moz Community, I'm looking for some URL structure advice for a new directory of a website. We're trying to rank for the term 'internships abroad in <country>'</country> We have roughly 100 pages targeting specific countries. Right now the URL structure is www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/china, but some of my colleagues believe this structure would be better: www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/intern-in-china. I personally prefer the shorter structure, but we couldn't come to any agreement so we thought we'd pose the question to the community. Any thoughts? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | dunklea0 -
Long or Short URLs. Who's Coming to Dinner?
This has been discussed on the forums in some regard. My situation. Example 1 Long Keyword URL: www.abctown.com/keyword-for-life-helping-keywords-everywhere-rank-better Example 2 Short Keyword URL: www.abctown.com/keyword In both examples I want to improve rankings for the "keyword" phrase. My current URL is example 1. And I've landed a page one ranking in Google (7) with that URL. In attempts to improve rankings further (top 5), I was toying with the idea of going simpler with all my URLs in favor of the example 2 model. Might this method help or hurt my current rankings? In recent articles I've read it seems that going with the simpler more human approach to my SEO efforts. Any thought would be appreciated. Cheers,
On-Page Optimization | | creativedepartment0 -
Redirecting to a keyword-rich domain URL
It's best practice to choose a domain that has keyword in it. But if someone has just launched a website and the domain name does not have keyword, is it better to purchase a new domain name that has a keyword in the name and redirect existing domain to the new domain? Will that help SEO? (This just launched website does not have any traffic or links yet.)
On-Page Optimization | | Amjath0