Stuffing keywords into URLs
-
The following site ranks #1 in Google for almost every key phrase in their URL path for almost every page on their site. Example: themarketinganalysts.com/en/pages/medical-translation-interpretation-pharmaceutical-equipment-specifications-medical-literature-hippa/ The last folder in this URL uses 9 keywords and I've seen as many as 18 on the same site. Curious: every page is a "default.html" under one of these kinds of folders (so much architecture?).
Question: How much does stuffing keywords into URL paths affect ranking? If it has an effect, will Google eventually ferret it out and penalize it?
-
This was a good answer and deserves to be labeled as such. I decided not to pursue this since I have been lucky to take the top spot for important key phrases. Thank you for such a well crafted answer.
-
Hi Paul, no problem at all. As Ryan says, we all like a mystery.
As for the canonicals they can have a big effect if all variations of the domain are present. i.e.
etc
Not only are these duplicate pages they will most likely split up any inbound link juice as you can see from the PA of the pages you mention. Go to the http:// version and the http://www and you'll see the problem!
Using <link rel="canonical" href="<a href="http://www.vibralogix.com/">http://www.mydomain.com/" /> would probably be sufficient, and should be included, but I think it's best to have the canonicals redirected properly in the htaccess.</link rel="canonical" href="<a>
Very best wishes
Trevor
-
Thanks for the kind words Paul.
If you are looking for outstanding SEOs to follow, I would recommend EGOL and Alan Bleiweiss. I merely ride in the wake of their excellence.
Your response jumped around a bit but a few replies I would offer:
-
You are right. The value of most directories has dropped significantly. There are very few that offer any real value nowadays.
-
MVC is the current best practice for web design, but friendly URLs is a separate item. You can achieve them with or without MVC.
-
Most people who complain about their site's ranking drop actually have issues on their site if you look closely. I can't begin to share how many people I have encountered who were insistent their site was outstanding when their site had numerous issues.
-
Likewise, I have worked with clients who were quite upset about other sites that ranked well who referred to them as "junk" sites when those ranking were earned. Yes, there are exceptions and Google still has work to do, but they are doing a reasonable job. The truly bad sites usually disappear in 4-8 weeks.
-
I know nothing about "The Marketing Analysts" but they could have an offline presence or have undergone a name change which may explain the "Since 1989" claim. Let's remember Al Gore didn't invent the internet until about 1996 and there has been tremendous changes since then.
-
-
Hi Egol,
Thank you for your reply. The long folder names are probably from using WordPress as you pointed. I found a blog on their subdomain using WordPress.
I have to say that I've enjoyed reading your responses throughout the QA forum because your responses are short and to the point, pithy and no-BS. So, I'm curious about your response to my question. Above you responded "I doubt it" to the question about Google ferreting out keyword stuffed URL paths. Instead of trying to read between the lines, let me ask you, how good of a job is Google doing? How are they falling short?
Kindest regards,
Paul
-
Hi Trevor!
Thank you for your response! I'm VERY new to the concept of canonical issues. If you not in my other response, I'm just getting back into the game. How much do you think the canonical issue really plays?
Kind regards,
Paul
-
Hi Ryan!!
Man, I'm thrilled to see you responded, and that you responded so thoroughly. I've been reading threads in this QA forum for a few days, and I've come to think of you as a bit of an SEO celebrity! I have to figure out how to filter for questions you've answered! : )
Okay...the site. I've been away from SEO for about eight years and a lot has changed. In the past, I've enjoyed top positions in the SERPs under highly competitive key phrases, even recently (probably because good legacy websites seem to carry weight). Back then, I placed my primary site in directories thinking that people who visited the directories would see my listing and click on it and visit me (as opposed to getting a link to get "juice"). This is probably what has been giving my site good rankings for a while, and the fact that I've never used web-chicanery to outrank others. Over the years, I've seen spammy and trickster sites appear and disappear. I used to rip those sites (the only way to get a global vision of what's going on), and I studied what they did. I've got a curious little archive of living black hat tricks, all of which failed as Google caught on to them.
Now I turn my reflectors back on to what's going on in SEO and what companies and individuals are doing to position themselves in SERPs. I'm saddened to report this, but for all the overhauls, tweaking and tinkering that Google has done since 2001 when I started, spammy sites and sites with poor content, usability, usefulness, and design are still outranking truly useful, high-quality, high-integrity sites.
Very recently, I read complaints by people who felt like their sites had been unfairly affected by the Panda update (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en). I followed the links to "offending" sites (sites people felt ranked higher than theirs for no good reasons), and I went through the code in the complainants' sites as well. Holy cow...many of the complainants have good reason to complain. Shallow, spammy, zero-effort sites are blowing away robust sites with truly useful content. I've NEVER had a sinking feeling in my gut in 10 years that ranking well was a crapshoot - but I got that feeling after studying those complaints.
Years ago I worked in Macromedia Dreamweaver (remember how cool "Macromedia" was?) with regular HTML and nowadays I work in Visual Studio, just recently creating my first MVC3 site. MVC allows you to manipulate every tiny aspect of your site, including the URL path. There is absolutely no relation between the path you see in your browser and the actual path to the files on the server. And you can change the path and name of any page instantly and almost effortlessly. It's GREAT for SEO. So, I've been paying special attention to directory names and page names out there on the Internet. That's when I came across "themarketinganalysts" site and their unusually high rankings for so many important key phrases. After combing through that site, studying the source code, checking their rankings across many key phrases - I have to say, regardless of PA of 53 and keyword variances, the code reminds me of some of the code from spammy trickster sites from the early 90s.
If you hand code html, you get a certain vision for what the page will look like as you type along, from the mind’s eye of a visitor. When you go to a site and the code is packed with keywords, weird use of elements (like themarketinganalystemarketinganalysts' textless use of the H1tag to render the logo through CSS – an old trick to put the
next to the tag), you get the feeling that whoever wrote that code is telling search engines one thing, and visitors something different. It's duplicitous. Oddly enough, I'm not fazed by a company that outranks me (there is enough work for ALL of us), but I want to see healthy optimization, not one story in the code and another on the rendered page.
I'm going to do a more in-depth review of the code, page by page, look for trends and track down the sources that provide PA coefficients (or try to!). I’ll use the Wayback Machine to study the evolution of the site. Off the bat:
Mar 21, 2009 "This website coming soon"
Mar 31, 2009 "PREDICTIVE WEB ANALYTICS" - nothing about translation
May 25, 2009 Starts taking current formOdd. This is claimed on the current site: "Since 1989, The MARKETING ANALYSTS has built its Language Translation Services business..." That claim in not supported by what Wayback Machine shows. Geesh... Did I stumble across enterprise-wide shadiness? Hope not!
I'll come back to you and share my SEO findings.
-
Yep those PAs are strong even without canonicalization. Let's hope for Paul's sake that the site doesn't get an seo audit anytime soon!
-
Really great catch on the canonical issue Trevor! The entire time I just knew I was missing something, and that's it.
The www version of the URL has a PA of 53 which put's it as even stronger then the wiki page. The links mostly use "medical translation" as the anchor text with some "medical translator" and "medical translation service" variances thrown in. The link profile is varied enough to satisfy me the page has earned it's ranking.
-
Hi Ryan I noticed that the site has a canonical issue with both an http and www version too. Nice and thorough analysis, really interesting regarding the flag. Now I'm back home I might just have to take a look....although really should think about getting some shut eye here in blighty
-
I love a great SEO mystery and, for me at least, you have found one. I think this is a case for the famous SEO forensic analyst Alan "Sherlock" Bleiweiss.
I can confirm your overall findings and cannot explain the results. Specifically, on Google.com I searched for "medical translation". The results are listed below.
Result #19: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_translation
PA: 52, DA 98
Title: Medical translation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
H1: Medical translation
First words of content: Medical translation is the translation of technical, regulatory....
Internal links (2): Anchor text on both links is "medical translation". Lowest PA of a linked page is 61. About 1000 links per page.
Title: Medical Translation Services: Pharmaceutical, Equipment, Specifications, Medical Literature, HIPPA, [99 chars in title so display is cut-off]
PA: 12, DA 60
H1: none. H2: Medical Translation: Medical Translation Services: Pharmaceutical, Equipment, Specifications, Medical Literature, HIPPA
First words of content: When it comes to the medical translation, you can trust THE MARKETING ANALYSTS.
Internal links (3): Anchor text on all three "Medical translation". The highest PA from a page is 15. One of the links is from the home page which has 220 links total.
As I try to reach for some other factor that would allow this site to rank so well compared to the wiki page I notice the following:
-
the site has "medical translation" in it's site's navigation bar
-
the site has a link in the left sidebar on the home page directly to the page. The sitebar is a tad spammy with 43 links.
The above two items are factors, but not enough to do it for me.
I still couldn't explain the ranking so I searched the page for the term "medical". It only appeared twice so I performed a "find" which indicated the term was being used many more times on the page but was not visible. After searching the HTML and CSS I determined there was extra hidden content. I could not find anything suspicious in the CSS and was puzzled on how this content was being hidden then I realized the "trick" involved.
Please notice the US/UK flag in the upper-right area of the page. Press it. Viola! The home page contains extra content directly related to Medical Transcription that no one will ever see. The content includes "Medical Transcription" as a H3 tag, a link to the target page, and a nice paragraph.
This technique is squarely black hat. The purpose of a language button is to offer a translation. There is only one button for the language the page is already being presented in, so no one will ever press it. The content is additional text and links which has nothing to do with a translation.
Even so, I find it interesting this content is enough to yield the #1 ranking in SERP. Either there is another factor remaining that I could not locate (I really don't think that is the case but would love to hear from others) or Google is putting more weight to content on the home page. I have always felt home page content was very strong, but this page just is not strong enough to blow the Wiki page away like this at all, unless Google is weighing this home page content quite strongly.
I like the Yahoo results MUCH better for this search. Wiki is #2 and this page is #13. Bing shows Wiki as #5 with this page as #13. I am ok with those ranking as well.
-
-
WordPress produces similar long URLs that match the post title.
-
How much will it help? Very little, except where competition is very lo.
Will Google ferret it out? I doubt it.
-
Hi Paul
Wow! To me that just looks so spammy and over-optimised. I would think that the SE's would think the same too but as you say the urls rank #1.
What are the other metrics like for the site, perhaps they may show the reasons for high rankings?
Update: Just taken a quick look and it does seem the domain is quite strong with a DA 60. Having said that they have a canonical issue which,, if they sorted may make them even stronger.....so keep that quiet!
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
-
Does ID's in URL is good for SEO? Will SEO Submissions sites allow such urls submissions?
Example url: http://public.beta.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online It's our sites beta URL, We are going to implement it for our site. After implementation, it will be live on travelyaari.com like this - "https://www.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online". We have added the keywords etc in the URL "VRL Travels". But the problems is, there are multiple VRL travels available, so we made it unique with a unique id in URL - "13555". So that we can exactly get to know which VRL Travels and it is also a solution for url duplication. Also from users / SEO point of view, the url has readable texts/keywords - "vrl travels online". Can some Moz experts suggest me whether it will affect SEO performance in any manner? SEO Submissions sites will accept this URL? Meanwhile, I had tried submitting this URL to Reddit etc. It got accepted.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
Page title optimisation - Does suffix keywords matters?
Hi Moz community, We can see in many of the page titles; "brand & keyword" go after every topic like..... "best tiles for kitchen | vertigo tiles". Do Google count this suffix as any other word in page title or give low preference just because it has been repeated across every single page? What if the "keyword" is repeated with topic and brand name as well. I mean which one of the below 2 page titles gonna workout better in correlation with keyword and website authority ? best tiles for kitchen | vertigo tiles best tiles for kitchen | vertigo Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Substantial drop in organic traffic and keyword rankings
My client's organic traffic has been on the decline ever since January of 2015. We suspected it had to do with some spammy link farm pointing to his site. We disavowed those links in August 2015. Still, we are seeing huge drop offs in rankings and organic traffic. I am at a loss of what to do. Are we being penalized by Google for some reason? Has this happened to anyone else? If so, how did you remedy? Feel free to ask my any more questions if you more information. KDc8dMp fyVtrYo
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kheberger0 -
Best URL structure for SEO for Malaysian/Singapore site on .com.au domain
Hi there I know ideally i need a .my or .sg domain, however i dont have time to do this in the interim so what would be the best way to host Malaysian content on a www.domainname.com.au website? www.domainname.com.au/en-MY
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
www.domainname.com.au/MY
domainname.com.au/malaysia
malaysia.domainname.com.au
my.domainname.com.au Im assuming this cant make the .com.au site look spammy but thought I'd ask just to be safe? Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
Not ranking for keywords. wehhh
I am not ranking for any of my keywords despite getting a number of Backlinks to my pages and mentioning them in both content and meta tags?!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed0 -
Magento Category URL
Hello I do SEO consulting and a client launch a new Magento Enterprise site. My question is they changed a URL from /category-list/ to /category/ and it is 301 redirecting correctly but the links off of that URL are not. Example: www.site.com/category/ if you click a link the next one shows up like this: www.site.com/categorty-list/vendor/ for example. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | christaylorconsulting0 -
Please Help- Confusion about how to Avoid Keyword Self-Cannibalization and Keyword Stuffing
I am pretty much a rookie when it comes to the SEO game and to be completely honest SEO is really confusing. I just recently started using MOZ and I was looking at my On-Page report and I saw that I needed to correct some “Avoid Keyword Self-Cannibalization” errors. So I looked at the error and the fix. Here is what MOZ gave me. Cannibalizing link "How to make a fake diploma", "How to get a fake diploma", "Making a Fake High School Diploma", "Fake Diploma Template", and "Framing your fake diploma" Explanation It's a best practice in SEO to target each keyword with a single page on your site (sometimes two if you've already achieved high rankings and are seeking a second, indented listing). To prevent engines from potentially seeing a signal that this page is not the intended ranking target and creating additional competition for your page, we suggest staying away from linking internally to another page with the target keyword(s) as the exact anchor text. Note that using modified versions is sometimes fine (for example, if this page targeted the word 'elephants', using 'baby elephants' in anchor text would be just fine). Recommendation Unless there is intent to rank multiple pages for the target keyword, it may be wise to modify the anchor text of this link so it is not an exact match. This error is for my Hompage(http://www.fake-diploma.com) for the keyword Fake Diploma. My understanding is that for Self-Cannibalization to occur I would have to have a link on this page pointing to another page using "Fake Diploma" as my anchor text since I want this page to rank for Fake Diploma. I do have the right hand sidebar which contains my most recent posts and some of my titles do include Fake Diploma. How to make a Fake Diploma
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | diplomajim
Fake Diploma Template
Framing your Fake Diploma
To me theses are separate longtail keywords. While they do include Fake Diploma in them I thought theses were fine because they are not an Exact Match to each other nor are they an Exact Match to “Fake Diploma”. Am I wrong about this? Secondly I reached out on another Forum trying to get a better understanding of this and just got even more confused. I was told that I am also Keyword Stuffing and could be penalized. They said because I have Fake Diploma in most of my article titles that I am Stuffing Fake Diploma. I am in a Niche Market and of course most of my titles include Fake Diploma because that is what my entire site is about. I used the Google Keyword Tool and searched Fake Diploma and it gave me a list of about 79 related keywords like: Make a Fake Diploma Online
Create a Fake Diploma
Fake Diploma Software This is just a few of the many that I have. I thought the best way to rank for a keyword was to actually write a post about that Keyword and use it as the title of the article. I am not over using the Keyword in the actual article and I maybe have a Keyword density of about 2-5%. I thought Keyword Stuffing was where you actually used the Keyword like 50 times and also just added random Keywords to the article that did not belong. Please help me with any insights you can offer. I feel like I am doing all of this completely wrong.0 -
Sudden Drop in Keyword Ranking - No Idea Why
Hi Mozzers, I am in charge of everything Web Optimization for the company I work for. I keep active track of our SEO/SEM practices, especially our keyword rankings. Prior to my arrival at the company, in January of this year, we had a consultant handling the SEO work and though they did a decent job on maintaining our rankings for a hefty set of keywords, they were unable to get a particular competitive keyword ranking. This is odd because other derivations of that keyword which are equally competitive are all still ranking on page one. Also, full disclosure, they were not engaging in any questionable linking. In fact, they didn't do much of any link building whatsoever. I also haven't been engaging in any questionable content creation or spammy linking. We put out content regularly as we are a publicly traded company - nothing spammy at all. Anyway, one thing I tried since February was engaging in a social media sharing campaign among friends and coworkers to share the respective page and keyword on their Facebook and Google+ pages. To my surprise, this tactic worked just like natural search usually does - slowly and through the months I saw the keyword rank from completely invisible, to page 6, to page 3, to page 2, and finally onto position 6 page one as of just last week. Today, unfortunately, the keyword is invisible again :(. I am perplexed. It's tough to build links for our company as we are in the public and everything we do has to be approved by someone higher up. I also checked our webmaster tools and haven't seen any notifications that can give me clue as to what's going on. I am aware that there was a Penguin update recently and there are monthly Panda updates, but I'm skeptical as to whether or not those updates would be correlated to this because, at initial glance, our traffic and rankings for other keywords and pages don't seem to be affected. Suggestions? Advice? Answers? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CSawatzky0