Keyword and URL
-
I have a client who has a popular name (like 'Joe Smith'). His blog URL has only his first name and the name of his company in it, like joe.company.com.
His blog doesn't rank well at all in the first 3-4 Google SERPs. I was thinking of advising him to change the URL of his blog to joesmith.company.com, and having his webmaster do 301 redirects from the old URL to the new one.
Do you think this is a good strategy, or would you recommend something else? I realize ranking isn't just about the URL, it's about links, etc. But I think making his URL more specific to his name could help.
Any advice greatly appreciated! Jim
-
Thanks so much your helpful advice. I really appreciate it! Jim
-
Maybe he has a company scheme for each employe to follow?
@james if your are building the subdomain only for seo / ranking reasons then Francisco is right, don't waste your time. maybe you go a little bit more into the details why you need a subdomain?
-
James, I had to read your question twice. Your client has a subdomain like joe.company.com and you want to redirect to joesmith.company.com?
Don't waste your time. Build quality links and watch the rankings go up. If creating a subdomain had the effect of having an exact match boost from Google, all of us here on SEOmoz would have created spammy sites. SEOmoz will not rank for SEO Tools by creating a subdomain seotools.seomoz.org
-
Hi Jim, if you are just starting / or Joe just produced a few content pages and didn't build up any incoming links you could change the name of the url and do a 301 to put more clarity for users looking for that name.
Next step will be to work hard, build good content & links.
A friend of mine has the same name as a famous football player but after 6 month he was able to outrank him. So be patient.
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
-
After you remove a 301 redirect that Google has processed, will the new URL retain any of the link equity from the old URL?
Lets say you 301 redirect URL A to URL B, and URL A has some backlinks from other sites. Say you left the 301 redirect in place for a year, and Google had already replaced the old URL with the new URL in the SERPs, would the new URL (B) retain some of the link equity from URL A after the 301 redirect was removed, or does the redirect have to remain in place forever?
Technical SEO | | johnwalkersmith0 -
Same URL names in one domain
Hi All, I have 9 different subdirectories for languages in the same domain example: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page-uk.html www.example.com/es/page-es.html we are implementing hreflang tags for the languages. I know it is better to translate URLs, but we won't for now, because all the NON-ASCII characters. But we are thinking to get rid of the dashes on the languages URL: -uk or -es, so it will be: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page.html www.example.com/es/page.hrml would this be a problem? to have same page names even if they are in different subdirectories? would we need to add canonical tags, at least for the main domain URLs? www.example.com/page.html Thank you, Rachel
Technical SEO | | RaquelSaiz0 -
Adding a parameter to the URL / URL Stracture
Dear Community, I would like to ask a question regarding url structure. We are struggling with shorting urls and we thought to add a "parameter" to the url. Example: domain.com/product**/a/** or domain.com**/a/**product/ Current url structure: domain.com/product/ So we go after and short url contains "/a/" and find the category we want. Is this going to harm our SEO strategies? Any idea is welcome.
Technical SEO | | geofil0 -
Keywords and stop words
Hello, I'm trying to rank my page for this keyword: "Rehab Royal Oak Michigan" But when you use that in a sentence, it just doesn't work. To make it grammatically correct I need to use "Rehab in Royal Oak Michigan" But now i'm using a stop word and i'm not sure if this counts it as a synonym or not - can someone help? Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | Michael_Myles_Himself0 -
Stop Words and keyword optimization
Ok, so I understand Google doesn't use stopwords (like "a" or "the"). Therefore if I am optimize for a keyword phrase, and say find an opportunity for say: "how to create stuff something" But it actually reads better as (although doesn't sound completely out of place as above) "how to create stuff in something" Which is better for SEO? (ignore usability \ readability in your replies please and assume it reads reasonably either way as that was just an example)
Technical SEO | | TheWebMastercom0 -
Shorter URLs
Hi Is there a real value in having the keywords in the URL structure? we could use the URL: Mybrand.com/software/tablets/ipad/supertrader.html Or instead have the CMS create the shorter version mybrand.com/supertrader.html and just optimize this page for the keyword 'supertrader ipad software'
Technical SEO | | FXDD1 -
Duplicate content error - same URL
Hi, One of my sites is reporting a duplicate content and page title error. But it is the same page? And the home page at that. The only difference in the error report is a trailing slash. www.{mysite}.co.uk www.{mysite}.co.uk/ Is this an easy htaccess fix? Many thanks TT
Technical SEO | | TheTub1 -
Ecommerce SEO with 130 keywords
Hello everyone, My name is Davys and I'm what you call a newbie...so the question may sound stupid....But where we go. In this campaign I will be targeting around 130 to 150 keywords to my store. So here is the technical question. What is the right way of indexing 150 keywords? Should I attempt to have all 150 going to www.mysite.com or should I break it down into smaller pages if I can put it that way. Like www.mysite.com/pages/bikiniwax for example. Even if I break it down, what is the right amount of keywords that I should SEO per page? Or do 150 pages? Please helppppppppppppppppppppp.... 🙂 Thanks a lot for your help.
Technical SEO | | Davys0