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
-
Url shows up in "Inurl' but not when using time parameters
Hey everybody, I have been testing the Inurl: feature of Google to try and gauge how long ago Google indexed our page. SO, this brings my question. If we run inurl:https://mysite.com all of our domains show up. If we run inurl:https://mysite.com/specialpage the domain shows up as being indexed If I use the "&as_qdr=y15" string to the URL, https://mysite.com/specialpage does not show up. Does anybody have any experience with this? Also on the same note when I look at how many pages Google has indexed it is about half of the pages we see on our backend/sitemap. Any thoughts would be appreciated. TY!
On-Page Optimization | | HashtagHustler1 -
Proper URL Structure. Feedback on Vendors Recommendation
Urgent! We're doing a site redesign and our vendor recommended new url structure as follows: website.com/folder/word1word2word3. Our current structure is website.com/word1-word2 They said that from SEO perspective, it doesn't make a difference if there are dashes between words or not and Google can read either URL. Is that true? I need experts to weigh on the above, as well as SEO implications if we were to implement their suggestion.
On-Page Optimization | | bluejay78780 -
Will Multiple 301's to the Same URL Cause Issues?
Hey Everyone, We have a client (I don't have permission to disclose) that has just attempted to create better URL's for their site, per our direction. In the process, their website platform kind of took over their renaming attempts and instead of creating the clean, short, descriptive URLs we all wanted, they got convoluted, longer URLs. This all happened within the past 3 or 4 days. So, they went out and got an add-on that's going to help them create better URL's. In the meantime, they now have the original page/URL plus two new ones for a total of three. No 301's have been setup yet. When they create the new and (hopefully) improved URL tomorrow, will it hurt their rankings to have three pages redirected to the new one? Is a 301 redirect the right method for this issue or should they do something different? Thanks in advance, Kirk
On-Page Optimization | | kbates0 -
301 vs. keeping identical URL
Hey everybody! I have a question pertaining to our redesign. The situation is as follows: /drug-rehab/alcohol-withdrawal-los-angeles gets a decent amount of views on out website, and we would like it to be on our redesigned site. I was curious what impact, if any, I would see given the two scenarios below. 301 to /alcohol-withdrawal make the new page /drug-rehab/alcohol-withdrawal-los-angeles as well The second situation is that there are a serious of other pages which don't seem to be of drastic benefit, which I don't feel NEED to be on the website. For example: /post-acute-alcohol-withdrawal-treatment/drug-los-angeles /rehabs-resources/drug-abuse/sub-acute-alcohol-withdrawal etc It appears to me that the content on these pages is rather similar, and I feel like they don't really say anything special. Can I 301 them to the new page? Should I let them die in the black hat inferno they were made in? Any thoughts are greatly appreciated! Thanks guys!
On-Page Optimization | | HashtagHustler0 -
Backlink URL: With or Without WWW?
When it comes to backlinks. Does it matter with or without WWW? For example my website is without WWW and I backlink with WWW, will it still affect my website rank?
On-Page Optimization | | Japracool0 -
The word "in" between 2 keywords influence on SEO
Does anybody know when you have the word "in" between two keywords has this a negative influence in Google? For example: "Holiday Home Germany" is the search term in Google
On-Page Optimization | | Bram76
"Holiday Home in Germany" as h1 on our website or do we have to use "Holiday Home Germany" on our website?0 -
Can we listed URL on Website sitemap page which are blocked by Robots.txt
Hi, I need your help here. I have a website, and few pages are created for country specific. (www.example.com/uk). I have blocked many country specific pages from Robots.txt file. It is advisable to listed those urls (blocked by robots.txt) on my website sitemap. (html sitemap page) I really appreciate your help. Thanks, Nilay
On-Page Optimization | | Internet-Marketing-Profs0 -
What is the best practice for changing a url of an existing page
I a looking through the on-page SEO reports in SEOmoz for one of my sites. It suggests that I change the url of a particular page to match the desired search term I want to rank for. In this case it is a site for a local business and the url is example.com/testimonials. when it probabaly should have instead been example.com/city-business-reviews. I have just a couple links to this page and I'm stuck towards the bottom of page 1 in the SERPs currently. Questions... 1. Should I change the url to include the exact keyword term I want the page to rank for? 2. If yes, what is the best method to ensure that any existing link juice to the current url is retained? Would I change the url, then create a new page with the old url and apply a 301 redirect to point it to the new page? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | fastestmanalive0