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
-
Changing Url structure to incorporate Woo Commerce
Advise needed please We have rankings coming along nicely with a website that uses page content but we now need to start online shopping with woo commerce The url structure has always been a bit of a mess, but its quite in depth We are looking to move small paragraphs about each product cat (formerly put on Pages) information into the Product Category and then the Product information into the product page and redirect the old urls to the new urls. It would mean updating the permalinks also - My concern if there is less leverage with product categories - do these rank just as well as pages, are we going to see our rankings change dramatically in doing so? Added to that - is it best doing this change gradually or all at once (like staging site to get the set up ready) and then pushing live
On-Page Optimization | | KellyDSD860 -
URL Path. What is better for SEO
Hello Moz people, Is it better for SEO to have a URL path like this: flowersite.com/anniversary_flowers/dozen_roses OR flowersite.com/dozen_roses Is it better to have the full trail of pages in the URL?
On-Page Optimization | | CKerr0 -
How Much Does Punctuation of a Word Effect SEO?
I have a page on a site that is targeted for "mens hair cut" and I have received a F for the grade. The content on the page uses "men's" throughout the content. (proper punctuation) When I re-graded the page with "men's hair cut" the page received a B grade. My question is, does mens v.s men's make a different for on-page SEO? Should my targeted keywords include "men's" rather than "mens"?
On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
How do i chaneg a url without losing pre-existing linkjuice?
my client has a page on his site: www.revisitors.com/REF/TEST the page is for a free traffic offer...i have this page currently ranking 25th or so for "free traffic" - a great keyword to rank for to promote this offer with..... i want the url to be www.revisitors.com/free-traffic.html and then change the title tags to free traffic | free targeted traffic or something along those lines....i have hardly put in any linkbuilding work at all to get to 25 - it was a surprise but now that we are there i want to tighten things up and optimize as well as possible.... how do i do this without losing previously built linkjuice and without having a duplicate content issue for having both pages exist with a 301 redirect.... if i am wrong about something please dont hesitate to set me straight...i am only masquerading as an seo expert these days anyway.....thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Ezpro90 -
Importance of URL Structure
We are trying to restructure our onpage SEO and want to make sure we have our URLs correct. The problem is we did the URLs incorrectly in the first place and the ones we currently have are several years olds. We have some URLs such as: http://www.firebrandtraining.co.uk/courses/management/prince2.asp and
On-Page Optimization | | RobertChapman
http://www.firebrandtraining.co.uk/courses/cisco/ccna_2007.asp which are not ideal but user experience aside does it make sense for us to change the URLs and use 301 redirects to the new ones or is the damage done to our natural rankings simply not worth making the change? I have read different articles saying different things, some say that URL structure has little weight (if any weight at all) on rankings while other people seem to say it is quite important. In addition we have heard that changing the URLs with a 301 redirect will cause a large drop in ranking which will take months to recover from and contrarily that 301s are now considered "ok" by Google and we shouldn't see too much change at all in our rankings. Any advice would be much appreciated.0 -
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 -
Maximum length of a URL for good SEO?
Hi there, We have a content database as part of our site and I noticed that the way the database is loaded with new content, it means that the URL’s for these pages are really long, around 100 characters or sometimes more http://www.xxxyy.org/knowledge-base/documents/word1-word2-word3-word4-word5-word6-word7-word8 Is there a suggted maximum character length for a URL? Kind of like for title tag where I max out at 69… Should I truncate the URL’s or at least reduce the numbers of words in them to something less spammy? Does that make a difference? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0 -
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