Breadcrumb wording and keywords
-
This is real estate website related. For every neighborhood I have a "condos" and "houses" page. In the breadcrumb structure I may have: "home > island condos > city condos > region condos > neighborhood condos". Questions:
-
Some breadrumb structures have 5-6 different breadcrumb link and repeating the word "condos" in each link seems redundant. Would it be better just to list "island", "city", "region", "neighborhood" and never use the word "condos" or "houses" in the breadcrumbs? For users this would be better.
-
If I implement what I suggest in 1) - deleting "condos" or "houses" wording from breadcrumb links, then on a condos page the word "region" (as an example) will lead to the "region condos" page whereas the exact same word "region" on a house page will lead to the "region houses" page. This means I will have a situation where the anchor text in breadcrumbs become 100% identical for my "condos" and "houses" pages, however, the they lead to different pages. Is this OK? I have in past been told that when I use internal anchor text, that the link should always leads to the same page. Having same anchor leading to different pages would not be good….is that so?
thank you
-
-
Hi Lee, In my 2nd message I included these URL's:
Hahaione condos pages: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-condos/
Hahaione houses page: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-homes/Obviously, 2 different URL's. Do you have any evidence or detailed blog posts showing that using same wording in breadcrumbs or inter-linking in general to different URL's is OK, as long as the URL and / or H1 clearly shows what the page is about?
Again, my concern comes from the fact that I have been sold if I interlink with the anchor "Example" then I need to make sure "Example" always points to the same landing page, as search engine's otherwise will be left confused. I somehow think this line of thought is outdated, but any evidence or insight to clarify would be helpful
-
No, you do not need to use the word 'condos' in each breadcrumb but it is necessary once in the highest sub-folder possible to prevent duplicate URLs.
Having it as your H1 will indeed be enough for search engines to recognise that for what the page is about, however you will get an extra ranking boost for it appearing in the URL also.
If you leave 'condos' or 'homes' out of your URL all together then you will end up with duplicate URLs as they will both be something like this for both homes and condos:
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
This will break the functionality of your site and you won't rank, of course. The reason I use this example:
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu-condos/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
is because it incorporates 'condos' into the URL whilst keeping the URL as short as possible and using your keyword as close to the top level, which is the most optimized way of doing it for your keywords (Condos in 'location').
Nice, tidy, short and clear URLs that explain what the page is, whilst hitting your keywords are the goal
I currently have two real estate clients with this format for example: www.domain.com/new-homes/location/property/. This usually results in higher ranking for 'new homes in 'location''
If you don't think it works for you that is fine, it isn't a huge deal providing you are succeeding with other ranking factors, but it has had proven success for me in the past.
-
HI Lee, In my opinion changing the URL to include the word "condos" in top level is close to not important. H1 keywords should be much more relevant.
You are saying: Unless top level in URL have the word "condos" in it, then I need to use the word "condos" for the anchor of each breadcrumb, is that what you are saying?In other words, having the word "condos" in top level of URL makes search engines understand it is a condos page and that is why. I am saying, wouldn't search engines based on my H1 which always has the word "condos" perfectly understand this is a condos page and that is reason why using same anchor for breadcrumbs for condos page and houses page is perfectly fine?
-
Oh I see.
If you are keeping the URL structure the same then it would have to be in a different format. As you only have 2 top level folders (Oahu and Honolulu) you could do it like this:
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu-condos/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu-homes/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
You can change all other anchors to 1 word, providing you have different top level anchors such as the example above.
Sorry for the misunderstanding!
-
I do not worry about URL strucuture, my question relates to anchor text in breadcrumbs.
-
should each breadcrumb link be "oahu home" "Honolulu homes" etc etc and for condos "oahu condos" "Honolulu condos" etc etc..OR
-
Should I use just 1 word "oahu" for both the houses pages and the condos page? In which case anchor text becomes identical....
-
-
At the moment it looks like the word condos is necessary as it is only in there once. However the higher up your hierarchy the keyword 'condos' is, the more importance it will have.
I would have it like this:
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/condos/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/homes/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione/
Search engines would still interpret that these pages were about condos in honolulu etc. because that is the subfolder that they are in.
Search robots read left to right, start to finish just like us, so the higher up your URL structure your target keyword is the better.
Hope this helps.
-
Thank you for the details. Let me give an example and if you could let me know what anchor you'd put in the breadcrumbs that would be great:
Hahaione condos pages:
http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-condos/
Hahaione houses page: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/hawaii-kai/hahaione-homes/
Thank you
-
I think you would be correct to take the word condos out of all of your lower level pages, Providing your top level page has 'condos'. The shorter the URL the better and having condos repeated when a search bot would know it has gone into the condos category already would not add any value.
Having the same URL structure after your top level page is fine as it is within a different category. If it is the exact same page however, make sure your canonicals are correct and functional.
There are many ways you can use internal anchor text. I do agree that you shouldn't have the same anchor text pointing to different pages when you are linking from the main body text, but in a navigation menu it is fine. If I had my choice based on the structure above I might do it something like Home > Condos > Island > City > Region > Neighbourhood. That is purely at matter of preference as it would allow for a good cornerstone top level Condos page to rank well and link to.
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
-
How can i recover from japanes keyword hack after wordpress clean up
I'm facing a big issue on my two blog legitloaded and asirimp3 months after I patch and clean up my WordPress and plugins, too... I still see the hacked site in google search that I have asked to delete, but I still see the same character and the hacked material in google. I don't know what to do, I'm confused. I try asking google to update my page, but I can't find the URL in the search console. when checking on google with URL: site:legitloaded.com tzj6XvF
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | frankbanny0 -
Site ranks good for all keywords except the important ones
Hey guys I am the marketing manager for https://www.tadibrothers.com/, i started a year ago when the website was ranked very poorly on most keywords, I got most of our nitch keywords rank well to fist page except the most important ones. backup camera
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TadiBrothers
backup camera system
wireless backup camera system
rear view camera Our backlinks campaign is doing well 15 backlinks on average every month.
on-site optimization is also good.
Our Domain authority is better than all our competitors. Can anyone Please help me to understand why they do not rank well? Hope to hear from someone soon1 -
Wrong Search words coming in search console
Hey there, My website All good but, in webmaster Search console some bad Queries(search terms) coming which is totally different from website. I want to make sure, is that harmful for my website traffic, as well as keywords Ranking?? How should i stop them to be crawl, ?? can any help for this query.?? i have attached screenshot of that, please check & help out, http://prntscr.com/cmusoq Thnx in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | poojaverify060 -
Confused with rankings for keywords that are not on the actual page?
Hey Guys, So I went to search a keyword, my competitor came up, when I looked for that keyword on their page i didn't see it at all, and the page is content thin, how is it they are ranking for the keyword at all? Bit confused at how this works. So having the keyword in your content is not necessary a ranking factor? Please advise and sorry if this question is really amateur, I'm sure based on this search there is more to it then that.... could you other ranking factors as to why they rank for a keyword that is not in their content? Does the whole exact keyword have to be in the content to rank? Thanks all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Keyword Phrases - Can You Break Them Up?
Can you break up a search query across a sentence and have Google still recognize which query you are targeting? Let's say I'm trying to rank a page for the phrase "best haircuts calgary". Is Google's algorithm advanced enough to look at page title "Best Haircuts - Where To Get Them In Calgary" and know it's targeting the query "best haircuts calgary"? If it can't do this right now, I could see it advancing to this at some point in the future, which would then change the game quite a bit in terms of how creative you can get creating pages for queries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Optimising a page for multiple keywords
I remember reading a question a while back about seo for a page targetting multiple keywords but I'm blowed if I can find it now.... I have a page which is optimised for one phrase and want to add 5-6 phrases/keywords... obviously I can't stuff the all the keywords in the page title or the header 1 tag. So I have written the content to mention the other keywords trouble is not wanting to compromise the quality of the page so of the keywords/phrases I have only been able to use once in the content. I assumed as the phrases are all on the same topic/area that this should not really matter. Apart from link building with the correct anchor text is there anything else I should be doing? The other option is to create custom pages for the keyword but again I am not keen on this idea.... Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Sitelinks (breadcrumbs) in SERPs
Hi there, I have a .co.uk & .ie website both have the exact same content, only differences is the UK website is selling the product in pounds and the Irish website is selling in Euros plus both websites have different contact numbers. I decided to use rel canonical on the .ie pointing to the .co.uk website as I think it was having an issue in my SERPs for the .co.uk website in Google.co.uk, anyway since doing this, I am seeing strange things happening in SERPs for my keywords, for example if you click the link below, my website is number 2 for 'hot flushes' if you hover over or click on 'health or 'menopause' in the breadcrumbs in SERPs it takes you to the .co.uk website, is this normal? Click here
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Targeting Keywords at Home page or 301 URL?
Background info This is a new site and I am using Wordpress for a CMS not a blog and I have set a static page as the home page. The problem is when I configure the home page as a static page in wordpress it sets a 301 redirect to that page, which is this domain.com/software-consultancy (so the software-consultancy page is now domain.com). I thought about creating a separate Home page but I didn't see the point as the pages would be almost identical. **"Should I target keywords to the home page?" ** If I start link building using the phrase "software consultancy" to the home page should I link to domain.com or the 301 redirect URL domain.com/software-consultancy ? My thoughts are that if the URL has the keywords I am targeting in it will help with SEO. Or should I create a separate home page and just link the company name back to the home and have a separate page for "software consultancy" my thought is that having exactly what the company does on the home page would be better. But I don't want to lose out on search engine traffic by not having the keywords in the URL I am going to be link building for. I guess if I link build to the 301 redirect URL I can always revert back to this URL if I want to change? FYI here is my site structure: The site is for a small software consultancy and I have the following structure: domain.com/software-consultancy -- (Set as Wordpress static Page so essentially a 301 redirect to / ) domain.com/software-consultancy/areas domain.com/software-consultancy/areas/london domain.com/software-consultancy/areas/new-york I would really appreciate some feedback on this, even if it's experience / advice and there is no exact answer. Many Thanks, J
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOKeith0