How important is it to include the target keyword phrase in the page URL?
-
If I want to target a keyword phrase to a particular phrase, but do not want to change the URL of that page, will that negatively impact my rankings?
I am also wondering if I can get around it by creating a new, short URL that 301 redirects to the original URL. Would that be as effective as including the keyword in the original URL?
-
If I want to target a keyword phrase to a particular phrase, but do not want to change the URL of that page, will that negatively impact my rankings?
A better way to say it is you are missing an opportunity to make a change which can positively impact your rankings.
A page's URL has a very minor effect on rankings. There are two larger secondary effects. First, if you offer a clear, relevant URL your click-through-rate may increase. Additionally, when others link to your page by copying and pasting the URL, you will naturally have good anchor text which is very helpful, especially in our post-penguin world.
Stefan correct shared there is not a reason to create a new short URL.
-
Totally agree with Stefan on this point.
Although, why are you so keen to keep the original URL? Already built a lot of links to it? Is it a homepage?
-
It wouldn't help you to create a new short url unless you redirect the old url to the new. Depending on the competition you can still rank good with a url that doesn't contain the keyword/phrase.
From a user experience it's of course much better with the keyword/phrase in the url. People see what your page is about just by studying the 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
-
URL keyword separator best practice
Hello. Wanted to reach out see what the consensus is re-keyword separators So just taken on a new client and all their urls are structured like /buybbqpacks rather than buy-bbq-packs - my understanding is that it comes down to readability, which influences click through, rather than search impact on the keyword. So we usually advise on a hyphen, but the guy's going to have to change ALLOT of pages & setup redirects to change it all wasn't sure if it was worth it? Thanks! Stu
On-Page Optimization | | bloomletsgrow0 -
Build pages to target keywords, or audiences, or both?
I'm building a marketing site for a client that does stage lighting design. They also do commissioned artwork installations, interactive design for tradeshows, etc. Because their work spans multiple industries (concerts, performing arts, live television, television advertising), I'm trying to figure out if their content should be targeting the industry, or the actual services they offer. There seems to be enough search volume to target traffic for specific clusters of keywords, but I think it would be a better user experience to tailor pages towards audiences. Should I lean towards creating pages for services offered ,or potential audiences? (A page for lighting design and one for interactive video displays, vs a page for museum directors and one for agencies) Or both? Thanks for any help!!
On-Page Optimization | | bigwheeler0 -
Title tag of product page including category keyword?
I'm doing some work on a site that essentially is about giving and getting reviews. It's heirarchy has categories and products within those categories. For the title tag of the product pages, they currently have "Best {Category} | {Product} Reviews" I've advised them that they should remove the "Best {Category}" part because a) they're already targeting the category pages themselves and b) from a user perspective, the product page should just have a title tag that makes sense for that particular page (the page is not necessarily the "best" and certainly is not a series of products within that category). I wanted to post here to confirm that my advice is sound. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | jim_shook0 -
Your opinion on "Keyword | Keyword 2 | Keyword 3 - Sitename" Meta Title
While I'm personally against It I have seen it used. I would think that Google might see this as some degree of keyword stuffing, rather than a 'natural' title, which may hinder ranking. What are your thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | azu250 -
Why isn't our site being shown on the first page of Google for a query using the exact domain, when its pages are indeed indexed by Google
When I type our domain.com as a query into Google, I only see one of our pages on the homepage, and it's in 4th position. It seems though, that all pages of the site are indexed by google when I type in the query "site:domain.com". There was an issue at the site launch, where the robots.txt file was left active for around two weeks. Would this have been responsible for the fact that another domain ranks #1 when we type in our own domain? It has been around a couple of months now since the site was launched. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | featherseo0 -
Changing the url of a page
Hello. I would like to change the url of a page. It currently has very few inbound links. I would set up a 301 redirect to the new url. Is there anything else I should take into account before changing the url? Is there a downside to changing a url? Do inbound links carry the same value when a 301 redirect is involved? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
Dupelicate content home page and custom page question
I am working on a website that got hit by the penguin update. Didn't get hit terribly bad, but dropped from number one to number 9. As I'm going through the pages, the theme and content is a mess. To give an example, say the site is about custom colored marbles. The main page content covers custom colored marbles, custom promotional marbles, custom glass marbles, etc. Custom colored marbles is mentioned and covered on all pages, which I am going back and trying to make each page theme specific. There is also a custom page, so I am at a cross roads on how best to employ the focus of the custom page and the home page. I am thinking the home page should emphasize colored marbles, and the custom page should emphasize custom colored marbles. My fear is that making such a drastic change will bounce the site completely off front page and that it will take time for the custom page to come up in rankings. AS it stands now I am confused as to how it even ranks on first page as there's two pages with custom colored marbles emphasis. Id like to clean this up as much as possible so there are no big hits with future google updates, but I don't want the site to drop off either as that would be hard to explain to the owner. Yeah, we are cleaning up your site and making it google compliant and in so doing you no longer rank on first page. That won't put food on the table. Thanks for any advise on this.
On-Page Optimization | | anthonytjm0 -
How many keywords / phrases can you SEO for?
Might sound like a bit of a daft question to you pro's but here it goes... I am been doing in house SEO for a company for a short while and since I have been managing it things have moved quickly in the right direction but I find myself limiting our SEO efforts to three key terms. Is this usual? The reason I am doing this is because I find that on page SEO is only really possible with those amount of terms (with regards to title, description, key word density, seo copy, on page links etc). I guess that what I trying to stay is: If I push on page opitimastion to more key terms will it be detrimantal to our current efforts? and Is SEO possible for additional key phrases which are not on page optimised?
On-Page Optimization | | RikkiD220
