Custom Landing Page URLs
-
I will begin creating custom landing pages optimized for long-tail keywords. Placing the keywords in the URL is obviously important -- Question: would it be detrimental to rankings to have extra characters extending past the keyword?
I'm not able to use tracking code, but need to put an identifier in the URL (clp = custom landing page).
For example, is
"www.domain.com/silver-fish.html"
going to perform meaningfully better than
"www.domain.com/silver-fish-clp.html"
for the kw phrase "silver fish"?
There will obviously be a lot of on-page optimization in addition to just structuring the URLs.
Thank you.
SIMbiz
-
It's a complicated issue, but adding 50K variations to 27K product pages can definitely be dangerous, especially post-Panda. At best, you're diluting your index and your ranking ability. At worst, Google could actually start de-indexing or at least devaluing core pages. Personally, I don't think the long-tail gains are worth the risk - these kinds of pages were behind the "May Day" update in 2010, and Panda continued that core philosophy. Google considers it a low-value tactic in 2012 - of that, I have no doubt at all.
Of course, it does depend on how you use them. To have custom landers for PPC and not index them is perfectly fine, for example. If you're tripling your indexed page count with thin content just to target SEO keywords, though, you're taking a very real risk, IMO.
-
Thanks for the great advice. However, now I'm becoming even more concerned about dynamically generated custom landing pages.
We are an ecommerce company selling product, and we have about 27k items and another 5k or so of content pages, not to mention 10k product reviews on the subdomain "reviews.domain.com" which are intended to do double-duty as SEO-targeted custom landing pages.
A third-party site-search provider as an add-on service is creating custom pages based on natural search queries that bring users to our site. For example, if a user searches for the term "big-toed troll t-shirt," a page would be generated on a subdomain that would look like "subdomain.domain.com/big-toed-toll-t-shirt.html." The page would include a list of related items that are derived from a search query and internal linking across the the included items. There are other on-page optimizations based on the KW phrase.
These pages are driving traffic, but I am concerned about cannibalization and other issues. To date, there have been something like 50K of these pages created.
Is this dangerous? I have more than 70 employees to support and I don't want to make a bonehead move that could put their jobs at risk.
Thanks.
SIMBiz
-
First off, a slight word of warning. When you spin out the custom landing pages, make sure they have unique content and don't do it in large numbers. It used to be that these kind of long-tail, keyword-targeted pages could help SEO (or, at worst, not hurt it). Since Panda and Google's attack on thin content over the past couple of years, these pages can actually cause you SEO harm. It depends a lot on the quantity and quality, of course. If you spin out 500 pages on a 50 page site just to target a bunch of keywords, and those pages only differ by a sentence or a few words, you're going to do more harm than good.
I doubt the two URLs you list would be much different. Theoretically, the shorter URL will focus more keyword power on "silver fish", but URL keywords are just one, relatively weak ranking factor, and you're talking about 4 characters.
You could use a hash-tag style URL, like:
www.domain.com/silver-fish.html#clp
I think those characers would be ignored by Google. Unfortunately, you'd have to modify your analytics to read them (as they'll be ignored by most analytics packages, too). Here's an article on how to do it in GA:
http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/how-to-track-clicks-on-anchors-in-google-analytics.html
That's a pretty technical feat for something that I doubt would have much impact, though.
-
Good Evening SIMbiz! That's a really interesting question. I would imagine the closer the URL to exact keyword match, the better. However a couple extra characters should not be too detrimental, especially if those extra characters are a nonsensical string of letters or a short string of numbers. One issue I've run into in the past, which you're probably way smarter and would never do something like this, is the creation of very similar (aka duplicate) content pages as a means to have a static page for each unique referrer site. Later to learn how to clean up the link juice cannibalization with canonicalization. For which I found this page very handy: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization -- Hope it helps. Best, Evan
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
-
Duplicate pages
Hi I have recently signed up to Moz Pro and the first crawl report on my wordpress site has brought up some duplicate content issues. I don't know what to do with this data! The original page : http://www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk/blog/ and the duplicate content page : http://www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk/author/david/ If anyone can point me to a resource or explain what I need to do thanks! David.
On-Page Optimization | | WallerD0 -
Should I use www in my url when running On-Page Report Card?
When creating a On-Page Report Card I get 2 different results when using a WWW and without for my url. What is best?
On-Page Optimization | | thomas.wittine0 -
Tilde + On-page Optimization
I'm analyzing my Hispanic site www.escolares.net, and I noticed that on-page optimization rank with an F pages using a tilde in target keywords. Does anybody know if SeoMoz software can completely understand in their analysis special characters as tildes? Cristian Majluf
On-Page Optimization | | motorpod1 -
Canonical to the page itself?
Hello, I'd like to know what happens when you use canonical to the same page itself, like: Page "example.com" rel canonical="example.com" Does that impact in something? Bad or good? See ya!
On-Page Optimization | | seomasterbrasil1 -
3 Different Home Page URL's Being Indexed?
Hello Everyone! I own a dog supplies eCom site on the x-cart platform. I recently upgraded to 4.4 version about 3 weeks ago and am noticing 3 different home page URL's getting indexed and ranked: /
On-Page Optimization | | k9byron
/home.php
/home.php?cat= I dont know why this is happening and I dont claim to be an expert SEO but know this cant be good! I am seeing high rankings on certain terms for all 3 URL's. Has anyone seen this before and can anyone give me any feedback on this and how it may be effecting my sites ranking in the future? Thanks in advance!
Byron-0 -
Redirect and page ranking
We used to have a good page rank of Google, but now our page rank dropped to zero. A few months ago we did a redirect from our www.???.com to non-www.???.com, because non-www.???.com is now our main website. We also have a number of other domains which we redirect to our main website non-www.???.com Do you think these redirects are causing the problem, and if so what can we do to fix it? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | poupette0 -
Page title structure?
From an SEO and user perspective what structure do you recommend for page titles. For example (given that they shouldn't ideally be more than 70 characters) :- Keywords (maybe two or three) | Company Name | more keywords I understood the best place for the company name was about second place. Is this now the considered view taking into consideration 'branding' which has been flagged up as the way forward. Keywords are separated by the vertical bar | - any thoughts? For 'house keeping' pages such as Privacy Policy - should this be optmised or simply stated as 'privacy policy' Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | PH2920 -
Optimization of home page
Hi there I have an issue which, despite searching hard, I simply cannot find the right solution for. We have an index page that used to rank pretty well for a main industry keyword. However following a revamp of the site last year the kw slipped and no longer brings in decent traffic levels. The problem seems to be that the old static site had a sprinkling of variable anchor text links that brought value to the home page. Instead of the main anchor being "home" we would revert to "main keyword" and variations across the site sometimes in t he content but mainly on the nav bars. However the new CMS design structure restricts us considerably with anchor distribution and so instead we opted for the site logo on the masthead to have an ALT tag for "main keyword" but so as not to game google too much we added .."home" to the tag. Probably pointless but we figured it could do no harm. This ALT text is site wide Problem now is that we have lost the spread of internal nav bar anchors and variety etc. We have slipped in the serps for "main keyword" and I cant help thinking we are not maximising the anchors as we should. So what Im coming to is this.... How can we tell if Google is picking up the ALT tage anchor as the main anchor to rank the site at the expense of all internal text anchors. Despite retaining lots of embedded anchors - according to the Moz metrics these are not being picked up because OSE suggests the ALT tag anchor is taking precedence. The serps probably support this view as well. Should we: a) Vary the masthead ALT if there is no way of avoiding this being the most important link / anchor on the page b) Remove the ALT anchor and instead opt for content links high on the page (we do have nav bar links saying "Home" site wide as well which may overrid the embedded links?) c) Leave the ALT alone and still push for content anchors as described in b) What is the best way to handle this..? Best wishes and thanks Morch
On-Page Optimization | | Morch0