Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Vanity URL vs domain URL
-
Hi guys,
Our CEO is having an interview with a known broadcaster on radio. During the interview he will mention a specific URL www.example.com/marketingcampaign that we want track on Google Analytics, therefore behaving like a vanity URL redirecting to the actual URL www.example.com/resources/primary-keyword-2018.
Would this work the same way a vanity URL in terms of tracking or not such as following guideline here ? I am asking because vanity URLs are supposed to be completely different domain name that gets purchased and in our case it is the same domain name just with a different URI.
thanks guys!
-
Hi Taysir
You can catch all the data you need by analysing this URL in analytics: www.example.com/marketingcampaign
Why do you need to 301 somewhere else? It doesn't make any sense.
UTM parameters could only be used if you append an existing URL (eg the homepage) with tracking. for example, if you had an email campaign or Facebook. As yours is aural (listened to on the radio) you wouldn't be able to convey it so it would be useless. Worth noting though.
Regards
Nigel
-
Hi Nigel,
Thanks for your response.
So you're recommending not to 301 redirect www.example.com/marketingcampaign to www.example.com/resources/primary-keyword-2018 but the whole purpose is to capture the listeners who remember this one time URL(this will only be mentioned for this radio show) within Google Analytics. If I don't redirect this URL then I will never know how many radio listeners came to our website, right?
Or am i missing something here?
Finally could you clarify this bit _"You could just use a preferred landing page and use UTM parameters to track in Analytics if you knew which source it was coming from." _What is the setup and how would this work?
Thanks for your time!
-
Hi Taysir
I can understand why you would want to do this and this is a perfectly acceptable way of doing it. However, I'm not sure why you would want to redirect it to another page. Why not just put all the information required on that page www.example.com/marketingcampaign?
There may (depending on who you listen to - I'm with Rand) up to 15% loss of link juice passing through a 301 redirect.
Also by publicising the 'vanity URL' it may well be indexed by Google but then de-indexed in favour of www.example.com/resources/primary-keyword-2018. because of the 301 redirect. When people searched for that page it wouldn't exist!
Intentionally setting up a URL that 301s is just bad practice and you risk Google not respecting it and listing both URLs anyway - so any ranking could go out of the window.
So in conclusion - fine having the 'vanity URL' (as you call it - it's a bit of an old-fashioned expression - any URL these days could be considered a 'vanity URL' - it was in the days when URLs had long strings of numbers and non-relevenat characters) but don't bother 301 redirecting. Use that single URL to provide all the information you need. You will be able to see it in Google analytics along with all of the source data.
(If you do decide to redirect - I wouldn't - do it in the htaccess file as it will all be seamless. Don't do it by java on the 'vanity URL' page. )
You could just use a preferred landing page and use UTM parameters to track in Analytics if you knew which source it was coming from.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en
Regards Nigel
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 change domains in Google Analytics without losing the data
Hi there, We recently changed our domain from .COM to .NET so that all our subdomains from external pages matched. Right now in Google Console we have our new .NET website being tracked, but in GA we are still tracking .COM. It is also causing issues with MOZ crawling our site because of the .COM/.NET discrepancy. My question is what is the best way to change our Google Analytics from .COM to .NET without losing historical data and what considerations do we need to change before implementing this? Our team was concerned that just downloading the old data would be too vast and it we wouldn't be able to continue manipulating it dynamically in GA. Thanks!!
Reporting & Analytics | | cPanel-LLC.0 -
Hello, our domain authority dropped significantly overnight from 37 to 29\. We have been building good links from high DA pages and producing quality, regular content.
Hello, our domain authority dropped significantly overnight from 37 to 29. We have been building good links from high DA sites and producing regular, good quality content. Anyone able to offer any ideas why? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ProMOZ1231 -
Migrated website but Google Analytics still displays old URL's and none new?!
I migrated a website from a .aspx to a .php and hence had to 301 all the old urls to the new php ones. It's been months after and I'm not seeing any of the php pages showing results but I'm still getting results from the old .aspx pages. Has any one had any experience with this issue or knows what to do? Many thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | CoGri0 -
How to get multiple pages to appear under main url in search - photo attached
How do you get a site to have an organized site map under the main url when it is searched as in the example photo? SIte-map.png
Reporting & Analytics | | marketingmediamanagement0 -
Parenthesis in URL?
For some reason, we have some URLs on our site with parentheses in them such as somesite.com/used-this(that)What will parenthesis do to the ranking of those pages?
Reporting & Analytics | | CFSSEO0 -
Why google stubbornly keeps indexing my http urls instead of the https ones?
I moved everything to https in November, but there are plenty of pages which are still indexed by google as http instead of https, and I am wondering why. Example: http://www.gomme-auto.it/pneumatici/barum correctly redirect permanently to https://www.gomme-auto.it/pneumatici/barum Nevertheless if you search for pneumatici barum: https://www.google.it/search?q=pneumatici+barum&oq=pneumatici+barum The third organic result listed is still http. Since we moved to https google crawler visited that page tens of time, last one two days ago. But doesn't seems to care to update the protocol in google index. Anyone knows why? My concern is when I use API like semrush and ahrefs I have to do it twice to try both http and https, for a total of around 65k urls I waste a lot of my quota.
Reporting & Analytics | | max.favilli0 -
How to turn on persistent urls in WordPress?
I'm using an appointment form on my website and I have the option to add a referral url to form submissions so that i know which pages the form submission came from. I need to be able to distinguish between organically generated form submissions and those that come in via AdWords. If referral url shows the AdWords tracking code i know the form submission came in from AdWords. My problem is that when a visitor comes in after clicking an ad and then visits another page on my website that AdWords tracking code disappears from the url. I was told that there was a way to turn on persistent urls in WordPress but I can't figure out how to do it. I'm assuming that if i turn persistent urls on the AdWords tracking code will remain on every subsequent url that they visit on my website. Is this true? Any help with this will be greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | SpaMedica0 -
Will 301 redirects (Same Domain) show as referral traffic in Analytics?
For an eCommerce site we have 301'd legacy product pages to new product pages. Is all that traffic going to show up as referral traffic from our own domain in Google Analytics? If so, is there any way to preserve original source/medium info or will all the source/medium info be our own domain since there is a 301 redirect?
Reporting & Analytics | | bozzie3111