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
-
How To Shorten Long URLS
Hi I want to shorten some URLs, if possible, that Moz is reporting as too long. They are all the same page but different categories - the page advertises jobs but the client requires various links to types of jobs on the menu. So the menu will have: Job type 1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ann64
Job type 2
Job Type 3 I'm getting the links by going to the page, clicking a dropdown to filter the Job type, then copying the resulting URL from the address bar. Bu these are really long & cumbersome. I presume if I used a URL shortener, this would count as redirects and alsonot be good for SEO. Any thoughts? Thanks
Ann0 -
Penalty Detection
Hi Experts In a Single VPS with 1 IP, I have 2 domains. two months ago, one of them was in top 10 of high Competitive Keyword but from beginning of 2017 when I use site:aslejens.com the title of main page replaced by another domain on the VPS vahidafshari.com. Is it a Google penalty?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | siteBaNa0 -
Spammy keywords in our sub-domain but no penalty?
Hi, We have cigarettes and viagra as keywords in our sub-domain where our clients can post their business content. We have decent number of impressions and clicks for these related keywords. I have seen that these two words, especially "viagra" is most spammed. So are these hurting us? We dropped post Penguin update. Any correlation? Do you think that these keywords penalise us? We don't have messages or suggestion from Google Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
When the site's entire URL structure changed, should we update the inbound links built pointing to the old URLs?
We're changing our website's URL structures, this means all our site URLs will be changed. After this is done, do we need to update the old inbound external links to point to the new URLs? Yes the old URLs will be 301 redirected to the new URLs too. Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jade1 -
Change relative to absolute urls?
Is it worth the time to go through a site that was built in Dreamweaver and change the relative urls to absolute urls?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn0 -
Keyword Position in Headings
Hi All, Where is the best place to position the keyword / keyphrase within a heading? i.e. for keyphrase Red Shoes Which of the below would yield better SEO results whilst ensuring readability to us humans. Latest fashions in red shoes.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
or Red shoes at an affordable price. Thanks Mark0 -
Canonical URLs and Sitemaps
We are using canonical link tags for product pages in a scenario where the URLs on the site contain category names, and the canonical URL points to a URL which does not contain the category names. So, the product page on the site is like www.example.com/clothes/skirts/skater-skirt-12345, and also like www.example.com/sale/clearance/skater-skirt-12345 in another category. And on both of these pages, the canonical link tag references a 3rd URL like www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345. This 3rd URL, used in the canonical link tag is a valid page, and displays the same content as the other two versions, but there are no actual links to this generic version anywhere on the site (nor external). Questions: 1. Does the generic URL referenced in the canonical link also need to be included as on-page links somewhere in the crawled navigation of the site, or is it okay to be just a valid URL not linked anywhere except for the canonical tags? 2. In our sitemap, is it okay to reference the non-canonical URLs, or does the sitemap have to reference only the canonical URL? In our case, the sitemap points to yet a 3rd variation of the URL, like www.example.com/product.jsp?productID=12345. This page retrieves the same content as the others, and includes a canonical link tag back to www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345. Is this a valid approach, or should we revise the sitemap to point to either the category-specific links or the canonical links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 379seo0 -
Keyword Stuffing if repeating word three times?
If one were to write something like this, "I cannot over-empasisize the importance of branding, branding, branding." on a marketing page that talked about all the types of Internet marketing, would Google consider it keyword stuffing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebWise10