Duplicate keywords in URL?
-
Is there such a thing as keyword stuffing URLs? Such as a domain name of turtlesforsale.com having a directory called turtles-for-sale that houses all the pages on the site. Every page would start out with turtlesforsale.com/turtles-for-sale/.
Good or bad idea? The owner is hoping to capitalize on the keywords of turtles for sale being in the URL twice and ranking better for that reason.
-
Sounds like they are wanting to make turtlesforsale.com/turtles-for-sale/ their homepage, which is quite strange. "Keyword stuffing" URLs like this will not help SEO in any way. I would advise against it and leave the homepage as turtlesforsale.com.
eg. for other pages on the site: turtlesforsale.com/state/city/ is better than turlesforsale.com/turtles-for-sale-in-state/turtles-for-sale-in-city/
Like most things in SEO, think of what is better for humans. The first example is much cleaner and easier to read, and for SEO purposes, there would be no difference between the two if all other factors were the same.
A similar question was asked (and answered very well) here: http://moz.com/community/q/url-seo-better-directory-structure-vs-exact-keyword-phrase
-
We have done similar in the past but rather than repeating the URL you could use /turtle-to-buy which is similar and as Google is now using similar terms that may be more positive in the long term. We see great success by mixing it a bit with associated terms.
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
-
Duplication content management across a subdir based multisite where subsites are projects of the main site and naturally adopt some ideas and goals from it
Hi, I have the following problem and would like which would be the best solution for it: I have a site codex21.gal that is actually part of a subdirectories based multisite (galike.net). It has a domain mapping setup, but it is hosted on a folder of galike.net multisite (galike.net/codex21). My main site (galike.net) works as a frame-brand for a series of projects aimed to promote the cultural & natural heritage of a region in NW Spain through creative projects focused on the entertainment, tourism and educational areas. The projects themselves will be a concretion (put into practice) of the general views of the brand, that acts more like a company brand. CodeX21 is one of those projects, it has its own logo, etc, and is actually like a child brand, yet more focused on a particular theme. I don't want to hide that it makes part of the GALIKE brand (in fact, I am planning to add the Galike logo to it, and a link to the main site on the menu). I will be making other projects, each of them with their own brand, hosted in subsites (subfolders) of galike.net multisites. Not all of them might have their own TLD mapped, some could simply be www.galike.net/projectname. The project codex21.gal subsite might become galike.net/codex21 if it would be better for SEO. Now, the problem is that my subsite codex21.gal re-states some principles, concepts and goals that have been defined (in other words) in the main site. Thus, there are some ideas (such as my particular vision on the possibilities of sustainable exploitation of that heritage, concepts I have developed myself as "narrative tourism" "geographical map as a non lineal story" and so on) that need to be present here and there on the subsite, since it is also philosophy of the project. BUT it seems that Google can penalise overlapping content in subdirectories based multisites, since they can seem a collection of doorways to access the same product (*) I have considered the possibility to substitute those overlapping ideas with links to the main page of the site, thought it seems unnatural from the user point of view to be brought off the page to read a piece of info that actually makes part of the project description (every other child project of Galike might have the same problem). I have considered also taking the subsite codex21 out of the network and host it as a single site in other server, but the problem of duplicated content might persist, and anyway, I should link it to my brand Galike somewhere, because that's kind of the "production house" of it. So which would be the best (white hat) strategy, from a SEO point of view, to arrange this brand-project philosophy overlapping? (*) “All the same IP address — that’s really not a problem for us. It’s really common for sites to be on the same IP address. That’s kind of the way the internet works. A lot of CDNs (content delivery networks) use the same IP address as well for different sites, and that’s also perfectly fine. I think the bigger issue that he might be running into is that all these sites are very similar. So, from our point of view, our algorithms might look at that and say “this is kind of a collection of doorway sites” — in that essentially they’re being funnelled toward the same product. The content on the sites is probably very similar. Then, from our point of view, what might happen is we will say we’ll pick one of these pages and index that and show that in the search results. That might be one variation that we could look at. In practice that wouldn’t be so problematic because one of these sites would be showing up in the search results. On the other hand, our algorithm might also be looking at this and saying this is clearly someone trying to overdo things with a collection of doorway sites and we’ll demote all of them. So what I recommend doing here is really trying to take a step back and focus on fewer sites and making those really strong, and really good and unique. So that they have unique content, unique products that they’re selling. So then you don’t have this collection of a lot of different sites that are essentially doing the same thing.” (John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trend Analyst at Google. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kQIyk-2-wRg&feature=emb_logo)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PabloCulebras0 -
Keyword stuffing?
Hi Guys, I'm working on an site which faces some ranking problems. Although some of the problems have been mapped and will get fixed in the future I’m wondering if you could give me an second opinion on the amount of keywords used on the website. Although the texts reads “OK” I’m wondering if the site could experience negative influences of the amount of keywords used. Website: http://premium-hookahs.nl/ Main keyword: waterpijp / shisha Besides the general keyword the secondary keywords get used a lot on category and product pages. I would love to hear your opinion!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bob_van_Biezen0 -
Why a drop in certain keyword but not others?
Hi. I am looking into a potential clients SEO issues and reasons why their rankings for specific keywords that they ranked for have dropped but others stayed the same or sometimes have improved. They received a manual spam action that was revoked after some disavow and so on. In May of this year they noticed a huge drop in more generic terms. The main keyword that was ranked 6th, dropped to 35th yet other keywords rose slightly. I have noticed this issue for another potential client as well. They ranked 1st for their brand name, then received a spam action that was revoked. Now they do not rank for their brand name but do for other long tail keywords? Any ideas the best way to investigate this or root out the issue and build to improve rank for more generic keywords? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | YNWA0 -
Keyword Stuffing
I am working with a client which has amazing results on Google but his site hits every "no no" to any of the google algros. The site has duplicate content, keyword stuffing, poor content and poor UX. However the site ranks p1 on any of the keyword searches. The site has about 2000 pages all duplicated maybe 1 our 2 words changed. I am a little apprehensive to get him to remove the duplicate contents and remove the keywords stuffing if it means he drops traffic and loses page rank. I have also noticed competition to me rank higher on keywords when they've got a list of keyword and locations i.e web design windsor, web design manchester etc... etc... however they don't seem to get penalised. Is there any accurate tools to check keyword stuffing? and has anyone else experienced this and has any recommendations to tackle this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Is it a good idea to target a similar versions of a keyword?
Salute you all, I am optimizing a site for an attorney. I have done some good research and find the keyword difficulties. Some of my keywords are very similar was wondering is this a good idea and safe (white hat) or not? e.g. page title: 1) city immigration lawyer 2) city immigration attorney My main and first reason is to target all users. Since some will search under 'attorney' and some under 'Lawyer'. Secondly one is easier than the other. I appreciate any input from more experienced seo experts. Chris 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Chris-tx0 -
URL structure: 301 redirect or leave as is?
Hello, My website, www.coloringbookfun.com is very old and authoritative, but the URL structure is terrible. If you check out some of our subcategories such as http://www.coloringbookfun.com/Kung Fu Panda and individual printables such as http://www.coloringbookfun.com/Kung Fu Panda/imagepages/image2.html You can see that they aren't optimized. I am curious to know the pros and cons of fixing the URL structure and 301ing them to the new optimized url. Will 301ing lose authority and backlinks for the sites pages? Does optimizing the url structure outweigh losing the authority/backlinks?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Starting fresh on a new url after serious Penguin update down rank
Hi friends My site www.acupunctureclinicvictoriabc.com was recently hit by the penguin update and i dropped to page 5 of local searchs for my key words. A while back I had some bad link building done and now paying for it:( I thought the disavow tool (used 4 months ago) would deal with this issue but apparently not The current url is feeling like a lost cause. My question is if I start fresh on a new url, can I use my old content (or even clone the site and move it to a new url) without being punished for duplicate content on the new site? Any recommendations for starting fresh? I really appreciate any thoughts on this matter, as I am feeling a bit lost and bummed about this issue thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Silasrose0