Should I avoid duplicate url keywords?
-
I'm curious to know
Can having a keyword repeat in the URL cause any penalties ?
For example
xyzroofing.com/commercial-roofing
xyzroofing.com/roofing-repairs
My competitors with the highest rankings seem to be doing it without any trouble but I'm wondering if there is a better way.
Also
One of the problems I've noticed is that my /commercial-roofing page outranks my homepage for both residential and commercial search inquiries. How can this be straightened out?
-
Thank you Boyd
-
There is no penalty for using the same keyword twice in a URL, especially if it's part of your domain name.
There are many examples of sites that have a sub folder that contain the same keyword as their domain name that have no problem ranking including your competition:
- runningwarehouse.com/mens-running-shoes.html ranks #2 for 'running shoes'
- seo.com/seo ranks #5 for 'professional seo'
- overthetopseo.com/professional-seo-services-what-to-expect/ ranks #2 for 'professional seo' (in fact only 3 url's that rank for that phrase don't repeat the term 'seo' in their url.)
- contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing ranks #1 for 'content marketing'
- etc.
**Ranking the correct page: **
Whenever you have an issue with the wrong page ranking better than the one you want, you just need to work on tweaking your onsite optimization for those pages. (And you may have to continue building more links to the page you want to rank.)
Here is a list of things that I'd make some test changes to: (Keep in mind that you can always revert things back if a test makes rankings go down.)
- Test different title tags on the two pages making one less optimized for the keyword and the other more optimized.
- Add more copy to the page you want to rank.
- Do an internal link audit. You want to make sure that anytime you are linking from one page to another with a specific keyword as the anchor text, that it links to the page that you want to rank for that phrase.
After you make a change, you need to wait until Google re-caches that page and sees the update (which can take a few days or more sometimes) and then check your rankings after that to see if there was any movement or not.
Boyd
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
-
Duplicate Schema Syntax
Is having both JSON and Microdata markup on one site detrimental to SEO? I'm unsure if Google would read it as spammy to have both.
Local Website Optimization | | GoogleAlgoServant2 -
Help choosing ideal URL structure
Hi All, We are considering changing the link structure for the website of a large restaurant group, which represents about 100 restaurants in the USA. While I have some opinions, I'd very much welcome the opinions of some other seasoned SEO's as well. There are two options on the table for the link structure, which you can see below. The question is for restaurants with multiple locations, and how we structure those URLs. The main difference is whether we include the "/location/" of the URL, or if that is overkill? I suppose maybe it could have some value if someone is searching a term like "Bub City Location", with "location" right in the search. But otherwise, it just adds to the length of the URL, and I'm not sure if it'll bring any extra value... In this example, "bub-city" is the restaurant name, and "mb-financial-park" is one of the locations. Option A
Local Website Optimization | | SMQ
http://leye.local/restaurant/bub-city
http://leye.local/restaurant/bub-city/location/mb-financial-park/ Option B
http://leye.local/restaurant/bub-city
http://leye.local/restaurant/bub-city/mb-financial-park/ Thoughts?0 -
How accurate are google keyword estimates for local search volume?
We've all used the Google Adwords Keywords Tool, and if you're like me you use it to analyze data for a particular region. Does anyone know how accurate this data is? For example, I'd like to know how often people in Savannah, Georgia search for the word "forklift". I figure that Google can give me two kinds of data when I ask for how many people in Savannah search for "forklift". They might actually give me rough data for how many people in the region actually searched for the term "forklift" over the last 12 months, then divide by 12 to give me a monthly average. Or they might use data on a much broader region and then adjust for Savannah's population size. In other words, they might say, in the US people searched for "forklift" and average of 1,000,000 times a month. The US has a population of 300,000,000. Savannah has a population of about 250,000. 250,000 / 300,000,000 is 0.00083. 1,000,000 times 0.00083 is 208. So, "forklift" is searched in Savannah an average of 208 times. 1. is obviously much more accurate. I suspect that 2. is the model that Google is actually using. Does anyone know with reasonable certainty which it is? Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | aj613
Adam0 -
Question about partial duplicate content on location landing pages of multilocation business
Hi everyone, I am a psychologist in private practice in Colorado and I recently went from one location to 2 locations. I'm currently updating my website to better accommodate the second location. I also plan continued expansion in the future, so there will be more and more locations as time goes on. As a result, I am making my websites current homepage non-location specific and creating location landing pages as I have seen written about in many places. My question is: I know that location landing pages should have unique content, and I have plenty of this, but how much content is it also okay to have be duplicate across the location landing pages and the homepage? For instance, here is the current draft of the new homepage (these are not live yet): http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/ And here are the drafts of the location landing pages: http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/denver-office http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/colorado-springs-office And for reference, here is the current homepage that is actually live for my single Denver location: http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/ As you can see, the location landing pages have the following sections of unique content: Therapist picture at the top testimonial quotes (the one on the homepage is the only thing I have I framed in this block from crawl so that it appears as unique content on the Denver page) therapist bios GMB listing driving directions and hours and I also haven't added these yet, but we will also have unique client success stories and appropriately tagged images of the offices So that's plenty of unique content on the pages, but I also have the following sections of content that are identical or nearly identical to what I have on the homepage: Intro paragraph blue and green "adult" and child/teen" boxes under the intro paragraph "our treatment really works" section "types of anxiety we treat" section Is that okay or is that too much duplicate content? The reason I have it that way is that my website has been very successful for years at converting site visitors into paying clients, and I don't want to lose aspects of the page that I know work when people land on it. And now that I am optimizing the location landing pages to be where people end up instead of the homepage, I want them to still see all of that content that I know is effective at conversion. If people on here do think it is too much, one possible solution is to turn parts of it into pictures or put them into I-frames on the location pages so Google doesn't crawl those parts of the location pages, but leave them normal on the homepage so it still gets crawled on there. I've seen a lot written about not having duplicate content on location landing pages for this type of website, but everything I've read seems to refer to entire pages being copied with just the location names changed, which is not what I'm doing, hence my question. Thanks everyone!
Local Website Optimization | | gremmy90 -
Duplicate content, hijacked search console, crawl errors, ACCCK.
My company employed a national marketing company to create their site, which was obviously outsourced to the lowest bidder. It looks beautiful, but has a staging site with all duplicate content in the installation. I am not seeing these issues in search console, and have had no luck getting the staging site removed from the files. How much should I be banging the drum on this? We have hundreds of high level crawl errors and over a thousand in midlevel. Of course I was not around to manage the build. I also do not have ftp access I'm also dealing with major search console issues. The account is proprietarily owned by a local SEO company and I can not remove the owner who is there by delegation. The site prefers the www version and does not read the same traffic for the non www version We also have something like 90,000 backlinks from 13 sites. And a shit ton of ghost spam. Help!
Local Website Optimization | | beth_thesomersteam0 -
Drastic changes in keyword rankings on a daily basis
Anybody ever seen keyword rankings for a site change drastically from day to day? I've got a client, a local furniture store, whose local keywords (furniture + city) rank consistently well without much change, but when it comes to broader keyword rankings (like "furniture" or "furniture store") in their zip code, they'll go from ranking at the top of Google one day to not being ranked at all the next (at least according to Raven Tools). My best guess is that it's just a reflection of personalized results from Google, but such a dramatic change day in and day out makes me wonder.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0 -
Multi Location business - Should I 301 redirect duplicate location pages or alternatively No Follow tag them ?
Hello All, I have a eCommerce site and we operate out of mulitple locations. We currently have individual location pages for these locations against each of our many categories. However on the flip slide , this create alot of duplicate content. All of our location pages whether unique or duplicated have a unique title Tag, H1, H2 tag , NAP and they all bring in the City Name . The content on the duplicated content also brings in the City name as well. We have been going through our categories and writing unique content for our most popular locations to help rank on local search. Currently I've been setting up 301 redirects for the locations in the categories with the duplicated content pointing back to the category page. I am wondering whether the increase in number of 301's will do more harm than having many duplicate location pages ?.. I am sure my site is affected by the panda algorithm penalty(on the duplicated content issues) as a couple of years ago , this didn't matter and we ranked top 3 for pretty much for every location but now we are ranking between 8 - 20th depending on keyword. An Alternative I thought, may be to instead of 301 those locations pages with duplicate content, is to put No Follow tags on them instead ?... What do you think ?. It's not economically viable to write unique content for every location on every category and these would not only take years but would cost us far to much money. Our Site is currently approx 10,000 pages Any thoughts on this greatly appreciated ? thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Keyword Cannibalization? My home page is ranking higher for a keyword that another page is targeting
Hello! My website's http://lessonsgowhere.com.sg/ and we're a marketplace for local lessons. I've been working on the site's SEO for maybe 3 to 4 months now, and am seeing some good results. The one thing that really bugs me right now is that my homepage is ranking for a keyword that I'm trying to target with another page. Specifically, I'm targeting the group of keywords for 'cooking class', 'cooking lessons', 'cooking class singapore' with the category page: http://lessonsgowhere.com.sg/cooking-classes However, my home page is currently ranking on the first page for local search (Google Singapore), and my category page isn't! On the other hand, the page that I'm targeting for 'baking class', 'baking lessons', and 'baking class singapore' is doing fine and is already in the top 3 positions for the entire group of keywords. Anyone have any ideas as to what I can do?
Local Website Optimization | | NgEF0