Worried about keyword stuffing penalty re: URLs
-
I've noticed a potential problem with a mult-location business (this is an example URL - not the actual name of the business)
I sense this is OK:
But then I noticed they've added cars to location part of URL in some instances (they have 6 locations in total and have done this with 5 of them):
carsdepots.com/birmingham-cars/cars
So we have cars in there 3 times (that's the maximum number of times in any URL but it looks a little spammy to me)
I am tempted to remove yoga from the location names, or flatten the URL structure completely - your thoughts would be welcome, or perhaps I shouldn't even be worrying?
-
I wonder whether anyone has carried out any research into this issue? Are there any stats out there?
-
I've noted my ideal URLs (from an SEO/usability perspective), so if there is a problem there's a plan b - the URLs are horribly clunky, and may be impacting CTR - yet traffic is increasing on the site, so will leave well alone for now - thanks for your advice Josh.
-
Thanks Marie and SErOb - appreciated
-
IMO, it's unlikely that keyword stuffing the url will negatively affect the site. But, if the rest of the page is keyword stuffed as well, then this could possibly have a negative impact.
-
If the structure of the URL's make sense, I wouldn't worry about it.
But if,
carsdepots.com/birmingham-cars/cars
is really just
carsdepots.com/birmingham-cars,
then I'd think about addressing it.
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 structure - which one is better?
We are creating a new website and got stuck while deciding the URL structure. Our concern is which url is better in terms of SEO i.e. pune.fabogo.com/spa or fabogo.com/pune/spa and why. Also which one would rank faster if someone searches for **spas in pune if both **pages are same.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabogo_marketing0 -
Keywords in URL: sub-directory or single layer keywords?
Hi guys, im putting together a proposal for a new site and trying to figure out if it'd be better to (A) have a keyword split across multiple directories or duplicate keywords to have the keyword hyphenated? For example, for the topic of "Christmas decor" would you use; (A) - www.domain.com/Christmas/Decor (B) - www.domain.com/Christmas/Christmas-Decor in example B the phrase 'Christmas' is duplicated which looks a little spammy, but the key term "Christmas decor" is in the URL without being broken up by directories. which is stronger? Any advice welcome! Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JAR8971 -
Swapping page keyword?
If we have swopped the keyword (leaflet printing) from this page http://www.fastprint.co.uk/leaflet-flyer-printing/ and moved it to http://www.fastprint.co.uk/ But the inner page is still ranking for the keyword is there a way to tell Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Mixing static.htm urls and dynamic urls on a Windows IIS Server?
Hi all, We've had a website originally built using static html with .htm extensions ranking well in Google hence we want to keep those pages/urls. We are on a dedicated sever (Windows IIS). However our developer has custom made a new DYNAMIC section for the site which shows new added products dynamically and allows them to be booked online via shopping cart. We are having problems displaying them both on the same domain even if we put the dynamic section withing its own subfolder and keep the static htms in the root. Is it possible to have both function on IIS (even if they may have to function a little separately)? Does anyone have previous experience of this kind of issue or a way of making both work? What setup do we need to do on the dedicated server.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emerald0 -
How to avoid keyword stuffing in dynamic pages?
Our new home page which is in development has been identified as being keyword stuffed for a particular search word. The problem is that the page includes a dynamic feed pulled in from our database. It would be similar to booking.com for example coming up as keyword stuffed for the word hotel. But hotels are their business and so any instance of the word hotel is probably relevant. Our problem is similar. How detrimental would this be for SEO? And does anyone have any ideas how this can be worked round?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | striple0 -
Google Penalty or Not?
One of my sites I work with got this message: http://www.mysite: Unnatural inbound linksJune 27, 2013 Google has detected a pattern of artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank are violations of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to mysite.com/. There may be other actions on your site or parts of your site. But, when I got to manual actions it says: Manual Actions No manual webspam actions found. -- So which is it??? I have been doing link removal, but now I am confused if I need to do a reconsideration request or not.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper0 -
Keywords in WMT
Hello, In Googles Web master tools under "content keywords" 2 of my major keywords are missing. My site used to rank well for the keyphrase "short hairstyles" but gets very little traffic from google at all now, about 1% of what it did before april 2012. Someone did a negative seo number on us by pointing 10k+ spammy links to us from message boards, this and the timing of the traffic loss leads me to suspectthe penguin update. I am removing them as best I can but no increase in traffic has resulted so I'm looking for any and all issues and the missing keywords seems to be an oddity. The missing keywords include "short" which is pretty fundemental. The word is in the domain and plenty of times in the content. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jwdl0 -
Search Refinement URLs
My site is using search refinement and I am concerned about the URL adding additional characters when it's refined. My current URL is: http://www.autopartscheaper.com/Air-Conditioning-Heater-Parts-s/10280.htm and when someone chooses their specific year, make, and model then it changes to: http://www.autopartscheaper.com/Air-Conditioning-Heater-Parts-s/10280.htm?searching=Y&Cat=10280&RefineBy_7371=7708. Will this negatively affect SEO for this URL? Will the URL be counted twice? Any help would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandLabs0