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
-
URL Keyword Variations?
I'm aware that keywords in the url aren't as effective as they used to be, but I'm still convinced that they do have a significant impact (based on results in one of the niches I'm in). My question is, will variations of keywords and "hidden" keywords have as much value as an exact keyword? For example, let's say that I'm trying to target the keyword "day." Will including variations like "daily" in the url work just as well? What about a brand name that includes the keyword hidden in its name, like "Dayest"? And, as a followup question, does including "stop" words have any effect? For example, if I'm trying to target the keyword "Day of the Month", would including "day" and "month" in the url be just as effective as including "day of the month"?
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
Optimize URL
Hello, My website have been running over five years. I have just reviewed and seen some URLs had not good. It is http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/who-need-visa-to-vietnam---1.html, containing characters "---1". Should I remove unnecessary characters "---"?. Thanks for any advice!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Are lots of wordpress tags hurting my SEO?
When I started my blog 4 years ago and didn't know what I was doing, I set it up to be organized using tags (no categories). I have around 20 tags and around 250 articles. Each blog article typically has 2-4 tags associated with it. There is a lot of topic overlap and putting each post in only one category wouldn't work. I have been no indexing, do follow my tag pages because they are just a list of post titles, but I'm wondering if the whole situation is hurting my SEO. On my homepage I have a sidebar menu/list of all the tags so I have link juice going to no indexed (but dofollow) pages. Reducing the number of tags would be bad for user experience because people who were looking for info on a specific topic wouldn't be as easily able to find what they want. Ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | KateV0 -
Long url > 115
Hi, in my web code I have link to my images that are resize online and the link is very long. like this src="http://img.espectador.com/mediadelivery/?fn=&i_enc=1&i_a=L2hvbWUvZXNwZWN0YWRvci93d3cvaW1hZ2VuZXMvMjUwMTY2XzEzNDk5NTQ0NjFfY29uc3RydWNjaW9uLmpwZw==&i_cl=1&i_tr=100&i_q=70&i_rt=0&i_w=250&i_h=188&i_wtmrk=" alt="Paro parcial de Sunca" border="0"/> I have a lot of warning in my reports with this and I would like to omit this warnings How can I do that? noindex? nofollow? Thanks The original page that contain that code is this http://www.espectador.com/noticias/250166/paro-parcial-de-sunca Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | informatica8100 -
SEO for Image only posts
Let's say I have a post where I show 25 different wood textures. I start the post with a small paragraph and then I show several images of wood textures linked to an internal or external page. Since I don't use a text link, then I have to rely on alt tags. It would be very difficult to assign a different alt tag to so many similar images, and I guess there would be a risk of keyword stuffing (walnut wood, oak wood, etc). On the other side, if I assign the same tag to all images, then that clearly is keyword stuffing (alt=wood textures). This is just an example, but it applies to most of my posts. What do you think I should do with the alt tags? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | enriquef0 -
Replacing "_" with "-" in url, results in new url?
We ran SEOmoz's "On-Page Optimization" tool on a url which contains the character "_". According to the tool: "Characters which are less commonly used in URLs may cause problems with accessibility, interpretation and ranking in search engines. It is considered a best practice to stick to standard URL structures to avoid potential problems." "Rewrite the URL to contain only standard characters." Therefore we will rewrite the url, replacing "_" with "-". Will search engines consider the "-" url a different one? Do we need to 301 the old url to the new one? Thanks for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | gerardoH0 -
Brand Name URL Redirecting to Actual URL
So we have already built a site under a parent company's URL: parentcompany.com And now we have their branded product lines in directories: parentcompany.com/brand-name1, and parentcompany.com/brand-name2 We also own the actual URL Brand Name 1 (which is also the exact description of the product): brandname1.com We do not yet own the URL for Brand Name 2 (which is also the exact description of the product): brandname2.com. This is because a squatter is sitting on it and is asking $10,000+ for it. What we are trying to determine is how valuable these brand name URLs are since they will be redirecting and not the actual site's primary domain name. Anybody know how much of an effect owning those and redirecting has on ranking for those brand names that are also very descriptive of the products? Would we be smarter to spend $10,000 on adwords or 10,000 on the domain? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | grayloon1 -
SEO for Blogs - Top Tips
Hi People, This may have been covered before (i am sure it had) but I was wondering if people use the same SEO tactics for blogs as they do for other sites. Really wondering if there are any tips for blogs specifically ? 🙂 Thanks all
On-Page Optimization | | wedmonds0