Keyword in Domain or not?
-
My on page optimization grade is an "A" with the following factors;
Factor Overview
<dl class="scoreboard clearfix">
<dt>Critical Factors</dt>
<dd>4 / 4</dd>
<dt>High Importance Factors</dt>
<dd>7 / 7</dd>
<dt>Moderate Importance Factors</dt>
<dd>8 / 9</dd>
<dt>Low Importance Factors</dt>
<dd>11 / 11</dd>
<dt>Optional Factors</dt>
<dd>5 / 5</dd>
</dl>
The main thing I appear to be missing is keywords in my URL. How truly important is that in today's SEO world and how much time or ranking would be lost if I do not have control to change the external links to my website if I decided to migrate to a keyword relevant url?
-
You would more than likely lose more than you would gain by migrating to a more keyword friendly domain name. I think Google is going to only downgrade the importance of keywords in domain names from here on out.
-
Also your question was phrased as in the Domain, and you asked about the URL. I actually gave advice based on the URL.
The domain is a little more important then the URL since the Search engine would look at it and say wow a whole site dedicated to apples. Again, it would be impossible to target much more then 1 or 2 keywords in a domain name so you don't have much control over it. If you look at the big companies, their Domain name is also their brand name. Pepsi, eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Zappos, Microsoft.. in these examples the domain name (accept Pepsi) doesn't really denote any type of service or product.
-
A keyword in the URL is somewhat important, but not enough I don't think, to completely change a structure to accommodate it. If you're building a new page, and you know ahead of time the page is about apples, then of course you should name the page apples.html(or whatever).
This logic is, how I think the search engines treat a url, if the keyword is in the url then the page is likely but not necessarily about that subject. So they will give some credence to the keyword if found in a URL. The thing is you can't put every keyword that relates to your page in the URL and I believe Search Engines know this.
In short, it does help, but I wouldn't move the world to accommodate it. If you're making a new page certainly name it appropriately, if you have a page that is preforming horribly then sure change it, but don't spend your days worrying about about a well established URL.
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
-
Trash Domain Or Redirect it (unmaintained)
We have an old website with an old domain that has not been maintained for a few years; it now has a DA of 14 and a spam score of 24%. Our current domain (same business) within a few years has a domain authority of 21 and page authority 29 spam score 1%. (Yes, this domain should have been redirected from the get-go) The question is what do you do with it now? Toss it. Or redirect it. That domain has existed for years but still not sure what its value is from an SEO perspective. I would love to hear your feedback. Is there any benefit to redirect the old domain to the current domain. Or is it a negative and what impact?
Technical SEO | | MyBambooSEO0 -
Geo Targeting a Country Domain
Hey Mozzers A customer of mine hosts an international web shop on a country domain (customer.ch) which is automatically targeted to 'Switzerland' by the Google Search Console. So far so good, the shops for Switzerland are all in a subfolders /ch/. However, there are 2 more shops in two more subfolders: /de/ (for Germany) and /row/ (for the rest of the world). Google thinks both /row/ and /de/ are Swiss shops which results in searchers on Google.ch currently getting /row/ with the wrong currency and language pair. Question: I can't set the targeting for customer.ch/de/ in the search console to Germany, it's set by the domain country to Switzerand. Also, the customer doesn't own customer.de. How can I still let Google know that customer.ch/de/ is the shop to be displayed only to searchers from Germany, but not to searchers from Switzerland? Thx!
Technical SEO | | ChrisCronimund0 -
URL Structure On Site - Currently it's domain/product-name NOT domain/category/product name is this bad?
I have a eCommerce site and the site structure is domain/product-name rather than domain/product-category/product-name Do you think this will have a negative impact SEO Wise? I have seen that some of my individual product pages do get better rankings than my categories.
Technical SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Rel canonical between mirrored domains
Hi all & happy new near! I'm new to SEO and could do with a spot of advice: I have a site that has several domains that mirror it (not good, I know...) So www.site.com, www.site.edu.sg, www.othersite.com all serve up the same content. I was planning to use rel="canonical" to avoid the duplication but I have a concern: Currently several of these mirrors rank - one, the .com ranks #1 on local google search for some useful keywords. the .edu.sg also shows up as #9 for a dirrerent page. In some cases I have multiple mirrors showing up on a specific serp. I would LIKE to rel canonical everything to the local edu.sg domain since this is most representative of the fact that the site is for a school in Singapore but...
Technical SEO | | AlexSG
-The .com is listed in DMOZ (this used to be important) and none of the volunteers there ever respoded to requests to update it to the .edu.sg
-The .com ranks higher than the com.sg page for non-local search so I am guessing google has some kind of algorithm to mark down obviosly local domains in other geographic locations Any opinions on this? Should I rel canonical the .com to the .edu.sg or vice versa? I appreciate any advice or opinion before I pull the trigger and end up shooting myself in the foot! Best regards from Singapore!0 -
How to prevent duplicat content issue and indexing sub domain [ CDN sub domain]?
Hello! I wish to use CDN server to optimize my page loading time ( MaxCDN). I have to use a custom CDN sub domain to use these services. If I added a sub domain, then my blog has two URL (http://www.example.com and http://cdn.example.com) for the same content. I have more than 450 blog posts. I think it will cause duplicate content issues. In this situation, what is the best method (rel=canonical or no-indexing) to prevent duplicate content issue and prevent indexing sub domain? And take the optimum service of the CDN. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Domain Hosting
I'm currently working with a client who provides products in Ireland Is it massively beneficial for the sited to be hosted on an irish server or will there not be much difference with it being hosted in England?
Technical SEO | | Sandeep_Matharu0 -
Trouble making up a keyword map
I’m starting my first blog and I’m in the phase of making a keyword map. Now I’m not sure about how it done and if it is done right. I would be thankfull if you’d be so kind to check it out and tell me if it’s good or not and what should change. PM me if you wanna help me, I'll send out the excel file. P.S.S.: For those who help out, don’t mind the almost empty transactional column, ignore that, just advice on how it is ordered.
Technical SEO | | JeffBlanc0 -
Changing preferred domain
My company has an international website, and because of a technical issue visitors in one of our main countries cannot visits the "www" version of our site. Currently, the www version is our preferred domain - and the non www redirects to that page. To solve this problem, I was thinking of proposing the following and would greatly appreciate any feedback! (Note: If you answered my www vs. non www question, thanks - this is a follow up) 1. Set non www site as the preferred version 2. Redirect from www to non www 3. Contact our current links and ask them to change to without “www” 4. Change canonical URLs to without “www”
Technical SEO | | theLotter0