How Important is it to Use Keywords in the URL
-
I wanted to know how important this measure is on rankings.
For example if I have pages named "chair.html" or "sofa.html"
and I wanted to rank for the term seagrass chair or rattan sofa..
Should I start creating new pages with the targeted keywords "seagrass-chair.html" and just copy everything from the old page to the new and setup the 301 redirects??
Will this hurt my SEO rankings in the short term? I have over 40 pages I would have to rename and redirect if doing so would really help in the long run.
Appreciate your input.
-
I can definitely say that keywords in a URL can make a difference in a competitive vertical. We have an article on site with a slug of "best-place-to-buy-a-mac-online" and you get one guess what keywords it ranks for.
That said, if you're talking about changing URLs sitewide, I would be very cautious. Maybe make changes to one or two pages to start and watch them for a few weeks.
-
I've just checked your website, and it does look fine to me. You have a clear navigation and all of that. I wouldn't worry about changing URLs (Google would still index them) But just double check with search console if Google has indexed all of your pages.
In regards to the seagrass.html vs seagrass-furniture.html, I wouldn't worry about changing it, because Google understands that your website is about selling furniture, therefore it realises that seagrass.html has to do with furniture. When you change your pages and put 301 redirects you loose a bit of link juice, so if I were you I wouldn't worry too much about your URL situation (it's a minor ranking factor) and would focus on link building and on-site optimisation.
Hioe that helps
-
It is an ecommerce site (yahoo) so all the urls are wickerparadise.com/ (whatever the id of the page is called) .html
The page with all of the chairs would be "x-chairs" x being the specific type of chair.
I have a main category page: http://www.wickerparadise.com/seagrass.html
Now this page has everything in the seagrass furniture category. I believe we made a mistake in calling this seagrass.html vs. seagrass-furniture.html (since we want to rank high for seagrass furniture and this page has more content then a specific item page)
Should I go ahead with renaming the urls and doing the redirects on a massive scale (30+ at a time) ??
-
Hi,
I would say that it is beneficial to have a clear architecture/structure for users and search engine spiders to navigate across your website. If you'd decide to change the structure, I would suggest using something like this: www.yourwebsite.com/chairs/seagrass-chair/.
When you say that you have a "chair" page, does that mean that all of your products are listed on that single page or do you have separate products pages?
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
-
What do you think of this "SEO software" that uses Rand's "proven method" ?
I saw an ad on Search Engine Roundtable and the call to action was... "What is the #1 metric that Google uses to rank websites?" I thought, "I gotta know that!". (I usually don't click ads but this one tempted me.) So I clicked in and saw a method "proven by Rand Fishkin" that will "boost the rankings of your website". This company has software that will use Rand's proven method (plus data from another unattributed test to boost the rankings of your website). I am not going to use this software. The video made my BS meter ring. But if you want to see it.... http://crowdsearch.me/special-backdoor/ Rather than use this "software", I would suggest using kickass title tags that deliver the searcher to kickass content. That has worked really well for me for years. Great title tags and great content will produce the same results. The bonus for you is that the great content will give you a real website.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | EGOL1 -
Do you get penalized for Keyword Stuffing in different page URLs?
If i have a website that provides law services in varying towns and we have pages for each town with unique content on each page, can the page URLS look like the following: mysite.com/miami-family-law-attorney mysite.com/tampa-family-law-attorney mysite.com/orlando-family-law-attorney Does this get penalized when being indexed?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Armen-SEO0 -
Best URL structure for SEO for Malaysian/Singapore site on .com.au domain
Hi there I know ideally i need a .my or .sg domain, however i dont have time to do this in the interim so what would be the best way to host Malaysian content on a www.domainname.com.au website? www.domainname.com.au/en-MY
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
www.domainname.com.au/MY
domainname.com.au/malaysia
malaysia.domainname.com.au
my.domainname.com.au Im assuming this cant make the .com.au site look spammy but thought I'd ask just to be safe? Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
Glossary pages - keyword stuffing danger?
I've put together a glossary of terms related to my industry that have SEO value and am planning on building out a section on our site with unique pages for each term. However, most of these terms have synonyms or are highly similar to other valuable terms. If I were to make a glossary, and on each page (that will have high-quality, valuable, and accurate definitions and more), wrote something like "{term}, also commonly referred to as {synonym}, {synonym}," would I run the risk of keyword stuffing penalties? My only other idea beyond creating a glossary with separate pages defining each synonym is to use schema.org markup to add synonyms to the HTML of the page, but that could be seen as even more grey-hat type keyword stuffing. I guess one other option would be to work the synonyms into the definition so that the presence of the keyword reads more organically. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | alecfwilson0 -
Should you include keywords in your domain name to rank well on Google Places?
Is it okay to include keywords in your domain name (as well as business name) to rank well on Google Places? In my opinion, this is very spammy and the sites using this technique will be slapped by Google sooner or later.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | thegoatman1 -
Solved PayDay hack - but SERPs show URLs - what should I do?
We had the PayDay hack - and solved it completely. The problem is - the SERPs have over 3,000 URLs pointing to 404 on our website all of which have urls that are like this: <cite>www.onssi.com/2012/2/post1639/payday-loan-companies-us</cite> What should I do? Should I disavow every one of the 3,000? No Follow?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ocularis0 -
Has anyone used tribepro.com
Does that concept really work. Any experience? I've registered and so far I think it's hard to measure whether the shares are spam or genuine. Would love to see it works for someoneThanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LauraHT0 -
Is it outside of Google's search quality guidelines to use rel=author on the homepage?
I have recently seen a few competitors using rel=author to markup their homepage. I don't want to follow suit if it is outside of Google's search quality guidelines. But I've seen very little on this topic, so any advice would be helpful. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smilingbunny0