Should I use keywords in all my URLs?
-
I couldn't find anything online that really covers my exact question.
If I wanted to change my home page URL, (currently along the lines of "http://example.com/home") would it be a good idea to change it to "http://example.com/dallas-auto-repair"?
Then on the "services page" I might change the URL to "http://example.com/dallas-auto-services".
Pages like the contact page would probably remain simply "example.com/contact"
Theoretically by putting my main keywords right there in the URL, I would imagine that I could get moved up in the SERPs. Am I wrong?
So if this is a bad idea, please let me know why.
If this is a good idea, do you have any articles or references that cover this, or even personal experience?
-
"If I wanted to change my home page URL, (currently along the lines of "http://example.com/home") would it be a good idea to change it to "http://example.com/dallas-auto-repair"?"
I have to say no to this particular example. Realistically, your home page probably shouldn't sit on an internal URL like this anyway; is there a reason why the home page is not sitting on the root?
If you were to follow this exact example, it sounds like your home page targets "Dallas auto repair", but that there is an internal page targeting "Dallas auto services" as well, which sounds like a good recipe for having internal pages compete against each other for the same type of rankings.
We advise caution when implementing redirects: if there is no good reason besides "this would get a keyword into the URL", it's usually not a great idea. If you need to change the URL for a number of reasons, putting keywords in the new URL is a good idea. Say you have long, complicated dynamic URLs that a CMS has created: you'd be best to make these static URLs for a number of reasons. However, if you have a URL like www.example.com/auto-repair-services, I would definitely not 301 redirect that to www.example.com/dallas-auto-repair-services just to get the word "Dallas" in there, for example.
301 redirects sometimes don't seem to transfer the exact authority / rankings from one URL to another, so unless there is a very good reason to go through redirects, I would not do it.
-
What Robert said is quite correct. However, I wanted to expand a little bit upon; "Make sure any url change takes into accounts links, etc."
If a page has some really good links, and it's receiving a lot of traffic - it's necessary to redirect the old URL to the new URL. Otherwise you'll lose traffic wherever the old URL is linked, such as local directories. I'm not sure what type of server you're using, so I can't comment on how you would handle that.
In order to find inbound links to the pages you would like to change, you would need Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, Moz Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO and/or aHrefs. Whether or not you use anything listed after Bing Webmaster Tools is up to you, but it's highly recommended should your budget cover the cost. I believe Moz Open Site Explorer is free to a point.
The point is to get all of the link data possible, because one source is generally inadequate.
So, as Robert said, use caution when you make these changes.
-
Marshall_Motors
You have a question of would it be a good idea? To which I would say, yes it would. I would caution not trying to go overboard and I would caution that if you are already ranking well (that is subjective to you) to be very careful. Make sure any url change takes into accounts links, etc.
But, you also state: A "...by putting my main keywords right there in the URL, I would imagine that..." B "... I could get moved up in the SERPs."" Am I wrong?" For this you are drawing a huge conclusion that A would equal B. IMO this is one of the biggest mistakes we make in SEO - we attribute too much to one factor. KW's in a URL are a factor in SEO ranking. What is the value of that factor? 1%? 10%? or .0001%
All you can do is test it out for your site in your vertical and see what happens. We like to tell our clients that SEO is a 100% game and we never attain that 100% which would be perfect SEO. There are many reasons and often they are business reasons that overshadow the SEO reasons. What we try to do is get as close to the holy grail of 100% as possible for a given page.
Hope this helps,
Robert
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
-
Multiple service area pages that rank well. However the primary keyword page tends to bounce around between the pages. How can I stabalise the ranking to the primary page
We have multiple service area pages attached to the primary keyword for the site which arent in the navigation and we have the primary page which is in the navigation. Currently Google is choosing different service area pages to rank for the primary keyword so the rankings bounce around a lot for the keyword when it doesn't have a service area target in it. Eg work shirts vs work shirts brisbane.
Local Website Optimization | | jonathan.k0 -
Hreflang: customize, selection the best URL structure
Hi All,
Local Website Optimization | | SergeyFufaev
We have two websites:
example.info - this is a working site in Russian hreflang="ru"
example.com - this new site We want to start with US. For the US, we will have: local address and phone, currency in $, fully translated content.
In the future we want to expand the business (ie en-GB, en-CA, de-DE, fr-CA, fr-FR). For each country, a regional dialect, currency, address and telephone number will be used. I need to choose the right URL structure so that there won't be problems in the future. 1. When configuring geotargeting (ie fr-CA and en-CA ) in the URL of the page specify: • http://example.com/ca/ - hreflang="en-CA" - Can use Search Console geotargeting
• http://example.com/ca/fr/ - hreflang="fr-CA"
or
• http://example.com/en-ca/ - hreflang="en-CA" - Can I use a geo-targeting search console?
• http://example.com/fr-ca/ - hreflang="fr-CA" .
or
• http://example.com/ca-en/ - hreflang="en-CA" - Can I use a geo-targeting search console?
• http://example.com/ca-fr/ - hreflang="fr-CA" . quote: To geotarget your site on Google:
o Page or site level: Use locale-specific URLs for your site or page. 2. If I set the target (ie "en-CA", "fr-CA" and "fr-FR"). Can I use the page http://example.com/fr/ with customized targeting (hreflang = "fr-FR") for french speakers worldwide (hreflang= "fr"), ie: french speakers worldwide quote: "If you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the same language but in different locales, it's a good idea also to provide a catchall URL for geographically unspecified users of that language. For example, you may have specific URLs for English speakers in Ireland (en-ie), Canada (en-ca), and Australia (en-au), but should also provide a generic English (en) page for searchers in, say, the US, UK, and all other English-speaking locations. It can be one of the specific pages, if you choose." 3. Where is it better to place select of language and country on the page?
Header, footer, pop-up window ......
The page http://example.com will be used for hreflang = "en". In my case, do I need x-default? Can I use a page with hreflang="en"configured as the x-default version? ie: Is it right?0 -
Should I use Rel-Canonicals links for a News site with similar articles each year
Our small town news site provides coverage in a lot of seasonal areas, and we're struggling with the current year's content ranking above previous years. For instance, every year we cover the local high school football team, and create 2-3 articles per game. We'll also have some articles preseason with upcoming schedule and general team "talk". We've seen where articles from past seasons will rank higher than the current season, presumably because the older articles have more links to them from other sources (among other factors). We don't want to delete these old articles and 301 them to the newer article, since most articles include information/stories about specific players...and their families don't want the article to ever come down. Should we rel-canonical the older articles to the newer one, or perhaps to the "high school football" category page? If to the category page, should we rel-canonical even the new articles to that main category page? Thanks for the help.
Local Website Optimization | | YourMark.com0 -
Local SEO - Adding the location to the URL
Hi there, My client has a product URL: www.company.com/product. They are only serving one state in the US. The existing URL is ranking in a position between 8-15 at the moment for local searches. Would it be interesting to add the location to the URL in order to get a higher position or is it dangerous as we have our rankings at the moment. Is it really giving you an advantage that is worth the risk? Thank you for your opinions!
Local Website Optimization | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Can you, somehow, use dynamic number insertion on a click to call button (image)
Hello Moz! I have been beating my head against the wall for a few hours, and I am starting to get a headache. My question is simple: I am doing some work for a local salon, and we started a PPC campaign recently. It's very important that I get accurate ROI metrics from both our PPC efforts and Yelp advertising program, and the best way to do this is by using custom phone numbers and dynamic number insertion w/ CallRail to track phone calls being made to the salon. I can then cross reference the numbers used to call with the salon POS software to see what they spent, how many appts. they booked, etc. A VERY large portion, the majority in fact, of traffic comes from mobile, and in the past I had a big, fat, beautiful CTA click-to-call button that showed the salon phone number. However, I have found that with dynamic number insertion, and my near non-existent programming skills, it is impossible to have the number dynamically insert into an href image. Sooooo...any ideas on how to do this, or is it just not possible????
Local Website Optimization | | Sean_Gutermuth0 -
Keywords with locations
I've seen quite a few threads that orbit around my questions, but none in the last year, so I'll ask it 🙂 I'm seeing some strange results when testing various keywords with and without locations included. For a foundation repair company in Indiana, we've optimized for all the big cities, since the company services the whole state. Here's a sample of weird stuff: Test 1: If I set my location (all other Google 'helps' turned off) to Indianapolis and search 'foundation repair' result is #3 'foundation repair indianapolis' result is #20 'indiana foundation repair' result is #18 Test 2: Location set to the small town the company is based in (Rossville, IN) 'foundation repair' result is #1 'foundation repair rossville' result is #3 behind other companies located in Rossville, GA, and Rossville, PA!! I suppose I was under the impression that the ip location data Google gathers would weigh more heavily than how place names are optimized as part of keywords (or just that the physical location would supplant the place name typed into the search if it happened to be the same). But according to these tests, it seems that inferred location is by far a secondary factor. I can deduce that we're more optimized than our competitors for 'foundation repair', but less optimized for keywords with place names in them (we feel like we'd be verging on stuffing if we did more). Am I missing something here? Has anyone else seen this sort of thing?
Local Website Optimization | | clearlyseo0 -
Keyword Cannibalization? My home page is ranking higher for a keyword that another page is targeting
Hello! My website's http://lessonsgowhere.com.sg/ and we're a marketplace for local lessons. I've been working on the site's SEO for maybe 3 to 4 months now, and am seeing some good results. The one thing that really bugs me right now is that my homepage is ranking for a keyword that I'm trying to target with another page. Specifically, I'm targeting the group of keywords for 'cooking class', 'cooking lessons', 'cooking class singapore' with the category page: http://lessonsgowhere.com.sg/cooking-classes However, my home page is currently ranking on the first page for local search (Google Singapore), and my category page isn't! On the other hand, the page that I'm targeting for 'baking class', 'baking lessons', and 'baking class singapore' is doing fine and is already in the top 3 positions for the entire group of keywords. Anyone have any ideas as to what I can do?
Local Website Optimization | | NgEF0 -
Do you need exact match geographically targeted keywords for ranking within a specified city limit?
For example, I have a personal injury law firm in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. I only care about potential clients searching within the city limits of Sheboygan (and not within the state of Wisconsin or on a national level). Do the following elements need to contain an exact match geographically targeted keyword if I only care about ranking locally in Sheboygan, Wisconcsin? (The type of keyword phrase I'm referring to would be Sheboygan Personal Injury Lawyers, Sheboygan Car Accident Lawyers, etc.) Title Tag Meta Description Main Headline Body Content Should I not include an exact match geographically targeted keyword in my content and trust that Google can make the association with where I'm located by other factors on the website? Website factors: Google local business page is setup linking to my website Other local listings have been claimed and setup properly My contact page contains our full address and phone number My footer contains our full address and phone number on every page
Local Website Optimization | | peteboyd0