URL and SEO
-
How much weight do search engines give the URL? We're a medical call center provider and medicalcallcenter is part of our URL. Does that help us much?
Thanks!!
-
A competitor of mine has her name as the domain url and her keywords show on seomoz as "branded" and my same keywords show "Not branded"
Why is this?
-
Keith,
Thank you for this explanation. I was making it too hard and you just cleared it up for me.
Best,
Wendy
-
Hey Wendy,
I was just reading an article on exact match domains and thought it might be of use to you http://www.seomoz.org/blog/are-exact-match-domains-in-decline
-
A branded root domain = google.com, nike.com , apple.com etc any domain that uses a brand name and not a dictionary keyword's like "cheap-cars.com" or "cheapcars.com".
SEO's define a root domain as the domain name on it's own with no sub domain etc so google.com not www.google.com
-
Dear Davinia,
I am unclear on what branded root domain means. We use our name as branded keywords, but I assume that is not the same as branded root domain.
Thanks.
-
Hey Keith,
I did the same search and the keyword in the URL was not bold. Agreed don't use hyphens in the root domain (I do believe they help in folder paths), but anyway I feel that you and I could go on forever having a fun debate but I think we have made our points and from this Wendy will be able to make an informed decision, or at least our information has helped her to look in certain areas so she can do additional research.
Best regards,
Davinia -
Hey Davinia,
Check the screenshot attached, as you can see I searched for "medical call center" and in the first organic result it's parsed the domain for that keyword and made the keywords bold in the domain name.
Google's parse domains for for keywords, it's pretty basic stuff... You don't need to have a hypen (dash) in there as a delimiter any more (although this used to help years ago).
I was not simply suggesting building links to the home page will help (which it obviously will if done correctly), what I meant was there is little point building a page that as the same keywords as the domain and then building links to that page.
As the domain in question has the exact match keywords Wendy can use the home page to rank for those keywords without the need for an additional page targeting the keyword "medical call center".
Keith
-
The URLs don't have to be keyword heavy, they should be semantically in line with the content of the page and also be relevant, not only will this help as a ranking factor but it also allows for better authored search engine result page snippets (i.e. the keyword's will display in the URL on the SERP snippet), which in turn should help with click through rates.
A search engine isn't going to know that "medicalcallcenter" is "medical call center" so the URL doesn't include the keyword. Therefore adding the keywords to the file paths will get the keyword into the URL.
Agreed, building links to the homepage (and other important pages) would be a good idea.
-
If Wendy has a keyword heavy domain why not just build the links to the home page?! I would avoid repeating the keyword again in the URL if the domain already includes them...
I could understand this strategy if the domain was branded and did not include the target keywords, but that's not the case here.
Keith
-
I'd go for a branded root domain and when creating the file paths use keywords separated by hyphens, example:
www.medicalcallcenter.com
www.medicalcallcenter.com/medical-call-center
www.medicalcallcenter.com/healthcare-advice
www.medicalcallcenter.com/healthcare-advice/colds-flus -
The short answer is yes, google have reduced the weight of this (apparently) if i was picking a brand I would probably try to include a partial match for one of the head terms without it looking spammy if possible... (like SEOMoz.org).
Spammy keyword match domains (no1-cheap-car-insurance.com) don't look as pro a branded domain IMO.
Obviously this is only one ranking factor out of many...
Hope that helps,
Keith
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
-
Why the url inspection is disabled in search console ?
In this situation, how can we make our pages be fetched by google?
On-Page Optimization | | supporthandle0 -
URL Keywords
I am doing SEO on our eCommerce website and read that I should include keywords in the URL The original URL is: http://thegiftlinks.com/personalized-wedding-glass.html
On-Page Optimization | | abdulw
Title page: Wedding gift Dubai - Anniversary gift Dubai - Personalized Wedding Glass
Meta Data:
Wedding gift Dubai - Anniversary gift Dubai - Personalized Wedding Glass
It is great for a wedding gift and anniversary gift for friends and family members. If I will include the keyword to the url it will be like this
http://thegiftlinks.com/personalized-wedding-glass.html/Wedding-gift-Dubai is this the correct way to include keywords in the URL? Thanks0 -
URL keyword separator best practice
Hello. Wanted to reach out see what the consensus is re-keyword separators So just taken on a new client and all their urls are structured like /buybbqpacks rather than buy-bbq-packs - my understanding is that it comes down to readability, which influences click through, rather than search impact on the keyword. So we usually advise on a hyphen, but the guy's going to have to change ALLOT of pages & setup redirects to change it all wasn't sure if it was worth it? Thanks! Stu
On-Page Optimization | | bloomletsgrow0 -
Canonical URL Tag Usage
I have a large website, almost 1500 pages that each market different keywords for the trucking logistics industry. I don't really understand the new Canonical URL Tag USAGE. They say to use it so the page is not a duplicate but the page that MOZ is call for to have the tag isn't a duplicate. It promotes 1 keyword that no other page directly promotes. Here is the page address, now what tag would I put up in the HEAD so google don't treat it as a duplicate page. http://www.freightetc.com/c/heavyhaul/heavyhaul.php 1. Number 1 the actual page address because I want it treated like its own page or do I have to use #2 below? 2. I don't know why I would use #2 as I want it to be its own page, and get credit and listed and ranked as its own page. Can anyone clarify this stuff to me as I guess i am just new to this whole tag usage.
On-Page Optimization | | dwebb0070 -
Dates in URL's
I have an issue of duplicate content errors and duplicate page titles which is penalising my site. This has arisen because a number of URLs are suffixed by date(s) and have been spidered . In principle I do not want any url with a suffixed date to be spidered. Eg:- www.carbisbayholidays.co.uk/carbis-bay/houses-in-carbis-bay/seaspray.htm/06_07_13/13_07_13 http://www.carbisbayholidays.co.uk/carbis-bay/houses-in-carbis-bay/seaspray.htm/20_07_13/27_07_13 Only this URL should be spidered:- http://www.carbisbayholidays.co.uk/carbis-bay/houses-in-carbis-bay/seaspray.htm I have over 10,000 of these duplicates and firstly wish to remove them on block from Google ( not one by one ) and secondly wish to amend my robots.txt file so the URL's are not spidered. I do not know the format for either. Can anyone help please.
On-Page Optimization | | carbisbayhols0 -
Search engine friendly URLs
I'm going to create some new content for my site, I'm trying to decide on the best search engine friendly format. Namely, is it ok to use a subdirectory or should I keep all content on root level? Is the SEO effect of either of these URLs superior to the other? domain.com/cooking/lasagna.php vs domain.com/lasagna.php
On-Page Optimization | | limens0 -
URL Rewrite
(By Google Traductor) Hello, I wanted to ask about some changes that we are evaluating for the issue of passing the url with variables to be more descriptive, for example: http://www.agroads.com.ar/detalle.asp?clasi=139592 tohttp://www.agroads.com.ar/humedimetro-para-cereales-draminski-gmm-139592.html In this case corresponds to the breakdown of a product if you have long published andcan be well positioned to change the title of this position would be lost unless youmanage it with a 301, as one would manage when you have more than 30000 products and title may change several times? There are tools to manage this? Finally, we must apply this to all listed with their respective filters, recommends doingtheir part with 301 redirects and analyze what funciene well to continue with the rest or implement a complete change? I hope I can bring a little light to implement this. Greetings and thanks! Roberto
On-Page Optimization | | romaro0 -
Site URL's
We are redeveloping our website, and have the option to amend URLs (with 301 redirects from old URL to new), so my question is: Would 'golfsite.com/golf-clubs' achieve superior rankings than 'golfsite.com/clubs' for the search term 'golf clubs' if all other factors were the same? Should the URL reflect the intended search term wherever possible?
On-Page Optimization | | swgolf1230