Keyword in URL - SEO impact
-
Hi,
We don't have most important keyword of our industry in our domain or sub-domain. How important it is to have keyword in website URL? Most of our competitors pages with "keyword" urls been listing in SERP. What is back-links role in this scenarion? And which URL have more advantage? keyword in sub-domain or page with keyword. Like for "seo" keyword..... seo.example.com or example.com/seo
-
Hi JK,
Thanks for the reply.
First of all, this is an old article, and many (if not all) of the information given has changed in Google search algorithms.
In the case you are describing, in nowadays SEO (2019), I'd suggest you not to focus on having any keyword weight in the domain/subdomain.
Keep both services in the same domain, under the same company name. Google will understand that its the same company offering two services. Of course, you should have different pages for both services.
Probably would be of help, creating really good content to give context and use internal linking to tell Google which are your main pages and targeted search terms.Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston -
GR,
Appreciate the advice. We are working with a customer that offers two very different services (janitorial services and pest control). We have 2 options for organizing their site.
Option A: 1 website under the main company name with dual focus
Option B: 2 seperate site 1 for each service giving main service the company domain name and the secondary service the company domain name - janitorial.com
Would enjoy to hear your thoughts on this!
Thanks,
JK
-
Yeap, it should be redirected to relevant pages. Not to the homepage nor less relevant pages, because it's treated as a soft 404 error.
Here a great article:
Proof That 301 Redirects To Less-Relevant Pages Are Seen As Soft 404s To Google [Case Study] Google May Treat Expired Products Page Redirects As Soft 404s And, what google considers as Soft 404 errorsHope it helps.
GR. -
Thanks GR.
I have gone through the Moz article on 301 redirects. They say that every redirect comes with certain amount of SEO risk. What exactly it might be?
And everybody say that we must redirect to relevant page. I can understand that 2 pages content must be relevant, but what's the importance of URL here? Do we need a match in URL keywords too? Because, if a non-existing link is redirected to existing page, what will be the metrics to pass link juice or any risk as there will be no content in one of these pages and how bots check? Like for below example:
website.com/folder/page1/content/ is a non-existing page and if it's redirected to website.com or website.com/folder2/page14.
Thanks,
Satish
-
You're welcome, we are here to help.
Theoretically, there is no linkjuice loss with redirects.
Take a look in this article about the last news and update on Google about 3xx redirects.:
301 Redirects Rules Change: What You Need to Know for SEOHope I've helped.
GR. -
Thanks for the suggestions GR. That gives us an idea to proceed on.
We are also planning to move all the links from one subdirectory to another subdirectory. But we will be redirecting them to related pages.
For example, website.com/folder1/seo-changes to website.com/folder2/seo-changes
Only sub directory gonna change. But we have many links pointing to sub directory we are directing. Do the same link juice passes to these links redirected to another sub directory?
-
Hi there.
I've conducted some experiments on having the keyword in several places: Exact match domain, subdomain, subdirectory and in the slug.
My conclusions are:- Having it in a subdomain doen't help at all.
- Having it in a exact match domain (e.g. keyword.com) helps very little and creates a problem when the business tries to expand to more search terms.
- Having it in a subdirectory (e.g. domain.com/my-keyword/some-page) doesnt help much, unless you're trying to rank the page that comes at the subdirectory. This latter makes it a single page or just a slug
- Having it in the slug (e.g. domain.com/single-page-keyword) helps, makes the difference.
My opinion, when it comes to on-page optimization and keyword optimization, it's mandatory to place the main (or some variation of it) in the final URL.
In all my expriments, always there was a correct optimization (on page and for that kw). And were focused for similar kw with similar search difficulties.---- UPDATE ---
Here some information and resources:15 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs - Moz blog
URL - Moz's learn On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page (2016 Update) - Backlinko---- UPDATE ---
Hope ir helps.
GR.
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
-
Many New Urls at once
Hi, I have about 5,000 new URLs to publish. For SEO/Google - Should I publish them gradually, or all at once is fine? *By the way - all these URLs were already indexed in the past, but then redirected. Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading10 -
Is it a good strategy to create pages that are specific to different keywords to rank higher in SEO?
We have a main website and a local website. Would it be a right strategy to create new pages on the local website specific to rank for certain keywords in the non-branded space? Is creating new pages to rank for keywords the right approach? I
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FedExLocal0 -
Exit Popups Impact On SEO
Hi looking for any research on the impact of using exit popups (when a visitor is exiting the site), and the impact on it from SEO perspective. Regards, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
Canonical url question
i just search seomoz tooll it say duplicate content for www.mysite.com and www.mysite.com/index.php should i use canonical url for this ? is yes then is this right ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | constructionhelpline0 -
Multinational SEO
Hi all The situation: We have a .com website that is the core of our business over the last 3 years we have built this into a very sucessful brand. Customers are able to purchase products from our website and have it delivered anywhere in the world. As part of the development of our business we want to obviously rank high within serps regardless of what country our potential customer is from. We understand that we will need to translate much of our website to achieve this and that is something that we have in the pipeline. My question is more aimed at the English speaking countries and how we should optimise our website for these. For example: websitename.com.au and websitename.co.uk were initialy setup as 301 redirects to websitename.com, however, we have now set them up as their own domains which display the exact same content as the .com website. So to clarify the content on websitename.com/product1.html is also on websitename.com.au/product1.html and websitename.co.uk/product1.html What would the best way to ensure that our .com.au and .co.uk gain traction within the appropriate country? Is duplicate content still an issue? All our prices are displayed in USD will this go againts? We use US English (with a sprinkle of chinglish) as our websites copy languange should we change spelling for AU and UK? Does anyone have any case studies and or other reports I can read that may help me find the right solution for us. Thanks Danny
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DannyCarter0 -
Forwarding Empty URLs to Homepage for SEO & Old Backlink Salvaging - Is there any value or risk?
Our company owns about 30 URLs that we aren't currently using. Is there any SEO value to be gained by forwarding these content-less URLs to our homepage if they aren't currently indexed by google? Some of these sites were previously in use at low traffic volumes by companies who licensed use of our brand and URL. After parting ways a year or longer in the past, no 301 redirection was done to save the link juice, so it's long gone at this point. However, there may be some sites on the net that are still linking to various pages on the URL. What would be the best course of action to salvage any value of these URLs until they are in use again as full websites? Insights would be greatly appreciated! Cheers, Justin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grayline0 -
Multiple blogs for seo
I have signed up for some rather expensive lawyer directories that have very high domain PR, 's of 6 or 7 . Some of these allow you to make blog posts or articles on their site which should be good for SEO because of the high domain PR. I understand that if I do a lot of posts on one of these blogs with links back to my site, I should rapidly reach the point of diminishing returns because they are all coming from the same domain. Therefore, I plan to mix up my blo posts betwee several of these sites and also rewrite them and post them on my own site's blog. My question is this, if I post on any of these sites and I link back to internal pages of my site, and not to the home page, does this offset the "diminishing returns" factor? Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | diogenes0 -
Impact of Non-English target keywords in URL
Hi all, our site language is Farsi (Persian) so at first we tried to create URLs that contain our target keywords in Farsi too. The problem with this approach is that our URLs are not shown in a friendly style anymore: a bunch of unicode numeric codes instead of Farsi characters. Do you know which is the best approach? 1. Creating ugly looking URLs containing Farsi keywords 2. Forget about putting our keywords in URLs and have nice English URLs Thanks in advance for your time and help 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | diki0