Site Title When Your Domain name is the keyword
-
Hello,
I've been struggling with an issue for years. I own UsedCubicles.com. I'm ranked very well, the site generates leads and income on a regular basis. However, I never know what to name the site on the home page. The main keyword I go after is obviously "Used Cubicles". I also have product category named "Used Cubicles". I know google doesn't recognize my Used Cubicles product category as conical and reverts to the home page. I would rather Google use my categories more effectively to rank content or pages.
My current site title on the home page is NOT GOOD. Used Cubicles | Usedcubicles.com. Im nervous to change it, however because Im not sure if its helping me rank for the keyword, which I do. For years I was #1 across the country but lately its been dropping.
Any advice is appreciated.
-
Hi everyone,
Thanks for the input. I have made significant adjustments to the design of the home page, adding text content etc. I have noticed my competitors rank for my keywords from their category pages and the category pages I have that rank, rank really well. My issue is coming from certain categories not ranking, instead, google uses my home page. Specifically these categories.
https://usedcubicles.com/product-category/used-office-furniture/
https://usedcubicles.com/product-category/used-cubicles/
I want google to use my category instead of the home page to rank. I have no clue how to fix this. I have added links, content to the categories, changed the home page so its not so similar to the category itself. Google has marked those categories as conical but they just dont rank for the obvious keyword (H1).
Also, please take a look at the new design of the product pages. The intention was to provide more information about each product not only to increase conversions but to decrease bounce rate. So far, we have seen a 15% increase in conversions.
https://usedcubicles.com/product/knoll-reff-cubicles-fully-loaded-rare-find/
The only thing I can think thats holding my categories back is backlinks to the category URL'S
-
Hello, In my opinion, adding some relevant contents ( I mean text contents ) to your category is the best way to rank your specific category page. however, you can link to your specific category from the top of your home page, with "Used Cubicles" anchor text for a limited time, for example, 2 months.
-
Hi Ross,
thats very helpful, thank you. In the past, I've always thought adding products to the home page helps with SEO and increases conversions. I've actually seen this work many times via hotjar over the years. However, more and more companies are switching to show product categories on the home page instead of products. I think this would help make some of my other categories rank better and be shown as conical. Long story short, I think having that many products on the home page is affecting my category rankings. It's always risky business making massive changes to the home page, especially when its the page that ranks the best.
Another thing I recently did to help ranks is up date my products. Some of the products were posted years ago, I changed some of the content and moved the post date forward in time. Hopefully that has an affect as well.
Also, back to our first conversation, Im beginning to go after the keyword "Used Office Furniture". :).
I had briefly changed my site title on the home page to reflect this, that keyword is much more powerful than Used Cubicles. For now, I think Ill let my category of used office furniture bake for a bit.
Thanks,
Grant
-
Hi there,
I would only keep "Used Cubicles" as your Title since you have an exact match domain. Upon checking your competitors, I see that your competitor has more text on his inner page, you must expand your content on your home to outrank. The rule of thumb is to have 20-30% more text than your competitor. In addition to that, you might need to build more exact match anchor texts to the home page.
Ross
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
-
Shopify Site with Multiple Domains?
Hey there! My client has a website on Shopify. I don't even know how to open this can of worms, but let me try. The site URL is: https://mobilityequipmentforless.com/ However, there is another (older?) URL that gets updated as the main site gets updated and shows the exact same content. It's a straight duplicate, but is it's own URL and doesn't redirect to the main site. https://www.powerchairrecyclers.com/ And this isn't the SITE.Shopify back-end site name that was used for set up initially. I just have no idea what's going on here. Not sure if it's a serious error that needs to be fixed, or if it's something weird with how Shopify work. Any insight would be immensely helpful. Thanks! Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | naturalsociety0 -
Site naming - longer tail with keyword or short but off-term - does it matter?
So, we've established that the actual domain name is not a big ranking factor for google. However your chosen domain & site name will feature in your content so I'm figuring it does matter indirectly. Eg given a choice between: bobsfidgetspinners.com, welcome to "bobs fidget spinners", we sell fidget spinners.... or spinnersfidget.com, welcome to "spinners fidget", we sell fidget spinners I'm going on the assumption that the former is better because it introduces more on-term content (as well as nicer branding). For the limit content that talks about your brand name anyway. Is this a correct assumption? Would it make any difference if the rest of the site content was on-topic (and good, obviously)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HSDOnline0 -
Domain Name Change-Negative Ranking Effect?
I am considering redirecting my domain name from www.nyc-officespace-leader.com to www.metro-manhattan.com. My company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. so the new domain will be more consistent our identity. The Metro domain was registered with GoDaddy five years ago but has only been used for email and for forwarding (entering www.metro-manhattan.com will forward visitor to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com). What is the likely hood that redirecting to the Metro-manhattan.com domain will result in a drop in traffic and ranking? I asked this question a year ago and the results were mixed. But one year is an eternity for Google. I am hoping that re-directs work better now and that if this is implemented correctly there will be no ranking/traffic/domain authority loss. Thoughts?? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
"sex" in non-adult domain name
I have a client with a domain that has "sex" in the domain name. For example, electronicsexpo.com. The domain ranks for a few keywords related to the services offered. It is an old domain that has been online for over 10 years. It ranks well for local keywords. No real SEO effort has been made on this domain, so it is rather a clean slate. I am going to be doing SEO on this site. Will the fact that the word "sex" exists in the name have any sort of negative consequence. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING adult related or pornographic on this site. I would think that search engines are sophisticated enough to differentiate, but would potential customers with things like parental filters be blocked from viewing content? Is this hurtful in anyway? If so, would I be better off changing domain names? TIA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Easy way to change wordpress category titles. Currently categories are appearing with the same title?!
I'm working on a wordpress adult dating review site and have started to set up categories for each of my main keywords. I have also started to add sub categories by county and town and so far have done so for the counties of 'Lincolnshire' and 'Derbyshire'. The problem is though that for each of my subcategories the page titles are appearing the same. For example: www.mysite.com/category/online-dating/lincolnshire/spalding (root category online dating) shows the title as 'Spalding'. www.mysite.com/category/adult-dating/lincolnshire/spalding also has the title 'Spalding' even though it's root category is different (adult dating). It's probably easier to go to http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com to see how it's set up. If you click in the category text in the top menu and navigate to dating/derbyshire/alfreton for example and then adult dating/derbyshire/alfreton you'll notice the page titles are the same. I use all in one SEO pack and have rewrite titles checked with category titles set to %category_title% | %blog_title%. I also use category SEO updater. In order to prevent duplicate content issues how can I simply make the title of each category category root title/category subtitle(county)/category subtitle 2(town). The title of each category page would then read for example Online Dating Lincolnshire Spalding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Site #2 beats site #1 in every aspect?
Hey guys, loving SEOMoz so far and will definitely continue my subscription after the free trial. I have a question however, which I am really confused about. When researching my primary keyword, I have found that the second ranked site beats the top site in every single aspect, apart from domain age, which is almost 6 years for the top one and 6 months for the second. When I say every single aspect, I mean everything. More authority for the page and domain, more links, more anchor text links, more authoritive links, more social signals, more relevant links, better domain (although second ranked site is a .net), better MozRank, better MozTrust etc.... I have noticed though, that in the UK SERPs, those sites are switched, so #2 is actually #1. Could it be that the US SERPs just haven't updated yet, or am I missing something completely different.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | darrenspeed1 -
Do pages with irrelevant keywords hurt the domain overall for ranking for relevant keywords?
I have been doing SEO for the University I work at. We are optimizing our degree pages on a page-by-page basis. So hypothetically we have a page optimized for "online accounting degree" and another for "online marketing degree", etc. Although our focus is on specific page optimization, we hope the by-product is that the whole domain will start to rank better for "online degree". First of all, is this a reasonable expectation? Second, if this IS the case, will pages full of irrelevant keywords hurt the overall strategy? For example, our registrar and financial aid PDFs that are full of legal/financial mumbo-jumbo. Are these lowering our keyword density of relevant keywords across the domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SNHU0 -
One site or five sites for geo targeted industry
OK I'm looking to try and generate traffic for people looking for accommodation. I'm a big believer in the quality of the domain being used for SEO both in terms of the direct benefit of it having KW in it but also the effect on CTR a good domain can have. So I'm considering these options: Build a single site using the best, broad KW-rich domain I can get within my budget. This might be something like CheapestHotelsOnline.com Advantages: Just one site to manage/design One site to SEO/market Better potential to resell the site for a few million bucks Build 5 sites, each catering to a different region using 5 matching domains within my budget. These might be domains like CheapHotelsEurope.com, CheapHotelsAsia.com etc Advantages: Can use domains that are many times 'better' by adding a geo-qualifier. This should help with CTR and search Can be more targeted with SEO & Marketing So hopefully you see the point. Is it worth the dilution of SEO & marketing activities to get the better domain names? I'm chasing the longtail searchs whetever I do. So I'll be creating 5K+ pages each targeting a specific area. These would be pages like CheapestHotelsOnline.com/Europe/France/Paris or CheapHoteslEurope.com/France/Paris to target search terms targeting hotels in Paris So with that thought, is SEO even 100% diluted? Say, a link to the homepage of the first option would end up passing 1/5000th of value through to the Paris page. However a link to the second option would pass 1/1000th of the link juice through to the Paris page. So by thet logic, one only needs to do 1/5th of the work for each of the 5 sites ... that implies total SEO work would be the same? Thanks as always for any help! David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OzDave0