Using keywords in my URL: Doing a redirect to /keyword
-
My website in "On Page Grade" received an A.Anyway, I only have 1 thing to optimize:_"Use Keywords in your URL__Using your targeted keywords in the URL string adds relevancy to your page for search engine rankings, assists potential visitors identify the topic of your page from the URL, and provides SEO value when used as the anchor text of referring links."_My website is ranking in top10 for a super high competitive keyword and all my others competitors have the keyword on their domain, but not for my URL.Since I can't change my domain for fixing this suggestion, I would like to know what do you think about doing a 301 redirect from / to mydomainname.com/keyword/So the index of my website would be the /keyword.I don't know if this can make a damage to my SERP for the big change ir it would be a great choice.
-
I agree with Ryan. The one thing to consider is whether redirects will help or hurt your site. Even websites that are appropriately redirected lose some link equity in the process. See Matt Cutts' video here which says that roughly 10-15% of PageRank is lost through redirects and outgoing links. Therefore, if the site has existed using the format domain.com/post-name for a long time and attracted links to those URLs, then the small benefit you get from redirecting to domain.com/keyword/post-name may be outweighed by the natural loss of link equity.
-
That's pretty far down the list of things that would improve your site's rankings so I'd ignore it at this point. Plus, you'd be redirecting a new creation that would have nearly zero rank value.
Instead I'd focus on getting links from a greater diversity of locations (more internationalization) and try to get some great PR as well. Plug your competitors into OSE and see where they're beating you in the numbers there as well as securing links from sources you're missing via the Link Intersect tab in the Link Opportunities part of OSE. Cheers!
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
-
How to Incorporate Awkward Keyword Phrases
Certain keywords are good choices for my website (high CTR, low difficulty, high volume), but they would be very awkward to use in my website content. For example, "therapist near me" is a popular search term, but it would be very strange for me to use those words in that order in my content (I am a therapist). Any thoughts about this are welcome.
On-Page Optimization | | LPantell0 -
Am I accidentally Keyword Stuffing?
Hey Guys, So I updated some copy on my site recently and noticed that whatever slender rankings I had (often on page 😎 have completely disappeared. The copy was the only change I have made. Now I haven't intentionally keyword stuffed however I have noticed that there happens to be a lot keywords in there. For example on my PPC page I use the phrase PPC 16 times however it has just naturally fallen into the content as that is what I'm writing about. I'm wondering if there are maybe too many mentions here? 16 repeats of the word PPC and on the page there are 490 words. Does that feel like too much repetition or am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks, Matt
On-Page Optimization | | MattStott40 -
.htaccess redirect chains
At item 4 in the post at http://moz.com/blog/htaccess-file-snippets-for-seos the author recommends combining .htaccess redirects to avoid chaining redirects. I'd be obliged if someone could expand on: 1. What he means by chained redirects 2. How to combine the redirects per his recommendation Cheers.
On-Page Optimization | | ztalk1120 -
URL parameters
Hello, Currently, I paginated a content to 5 pages eg: http://abc.com/faqs.html?&page=2 Is it right? and how to check it is correct or not?
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Lost Page Rank after directing http:// to WWW?
Hi I am trying to redirect all the non www urls to WWW. After I redirected them, most of my category page PR are dropped to 0. Can someone please tell me if this is the normal after effect after the redirect? Example url: this is PR2 before the redirect http://www.ilovebodykits.com/category/95/Body_Kits_Front_Bumpers.html
On-Page Optimization | | ilovebodykits0 -
Keyword self cannibalization
Hello, I'm confused about the recommendations for avoiding keyword self cannibalization. I have a niche blog and some of my sticky posts on the homepage contain my site's main keyword in their title. For example, say if my homepage has "dog training" as it's main keyword, then there are going to be links to more longtail pages with titles such as "dog training London", "dog training Liverpool" etc. When I do this SeoMoz's on-page optimization tool tells me that this is keyword self cannibalization. I am building links to the inner pages using the longtail keywords only. 1. Do I need to rename pages with just "london" and "liverpool" etc and remove "dog training" from those links? 2. What is the best thing to do in this situation? Thanks, Kevin
On-Page Optimization | | KMack0 -
Keyword use in Title tag?
To improve SEO on a particular keyword, should you use that same keyword in the title tag of multiple pages within your site? Will that help or would it actually hurt by causing pages within your site to complete against each other for that keyword? Does it make a difference if that keyword is truly used on all those different pages?
On-Page Optimization | | KHCreative0
