How long is too long for domain URL length?
-
I noticed one of the negatively correlated ranking factors was length of URL. I'm building a page from scratch, we are trying to rank for 'Minneapolis Fitness' and 'Minneapolis Massage'.
Is www.minnnepolismassageandfitness.com just ridiculously long? Or does the exact match outweigh the penalty for URL length?
-
Now its all starting to come together. I love involving the community in the decision. Will do!
-
So with minneapolis massage I'd get great benefit for the keyword "minneapolis massage". But for every other keyword, the infinity of long-tails, I'm at a disadvantage for
EXACTLY! This reasoning is why I strongly recommend a short, branded domain name as the primary URL. My preference is to compete with great content and SEO strategies rather then trying to purchase an assortment of keyword domain names. That tactic is primarily for those who lack the proper SEO knowledge, or who have deep pockets to create a solid web page for each domain name and properly redirect it to the main site.
If you found a very high traffic perfect match phrase, you could consider acquiring the domain name and trying a couple things, but overall your best bet is a solid primary domain.
You have the disadvantage of a long city name (Minneapolis) along with other variations (Twin Cities) used. I would suggest focusing more on the "Fitness" aspect and allowing your physical location and other factors to establish relevancy for the location. "WalkerFitness", "SunshineFitness" or whatever brand seems to fit you best.
When trying to brainstorm names, engage your current clients. Make a poll, take a survey, give out a prize to whomever picks the best name! The process can generate publicity for you "Free 1 hour massage + 1 month fitness membership".
-
Definitely more clear for the noob! Thanks for the reply. Most helpful!
It occured to me as I've been thinking about this that the longer URL correlates negatively with every single keyword you target, while the exact match gives you a benefit only to the exact match keyword.
So with minneapolis massage I'd get great benefit for the keyword "minneapolis massage". But for every other keyword, the infinity of long-tails, I'm at a disadvantage for:
Minneapolis Fitness
St. Paul Fitness
Twin Cities fitness
in-home personal trainer in south minneapolis
etc. etc.
These long tails have got to out-traffic the simple "minneapolis massage" in the long term. So now I'm thinking we need something short and branded. "Minneapolis Massage" is still a possibility but it is a bit long to type and rather boring.
-
Hi Jesse,
Basically, the only significant search volume is for the shorter two word term "minneapolis massage", so there is no benefit in going for the longer term (which also has a negative correlation for rankings).
So, since Ryan advised that the .net version of minneapolismassage is available, if you are wanting an exact match domain that might be a better option.
Since the return you are wanting is quite modest, then the traffic afforded by that term and the little extra you might attract from other terms should work for you if you can get some reasonable rankings.
I would suggest that you put some good effort into local search optimization if you decide to go with that domain.
Hope that is clearer,
Sha
-
I'm afraid I'm getting a little lost. I'm still new to all this.
As far as I can tell the correlations are in conflict. +0.22 exact match. Domain name length -0.07. So it seems to me that the data says go for exact match even though it makes it long.
I'm going to guess at what a "breakout" term is. They must mean keywords like Minneapolis Fitness, Minneapolis Massage, etc.
I'm also going to guess that "single word head terms" mean fitness, massage, and Minneapolis. If so then it is true that we aren't interested in trying to compete for those.
The scope of the project is very small. Basically a personal trainer and a massage therapist who want to bring in a few extra clients. The site would be very small scale as well, basically a platform for them to interact with their client base, and bring in a new client or two from time to time.
I'm hoping that the level of traffic for "minneapolis massage" and "minneapolis fitness" or "minneapolis personal trainer" would bring enough traffic to accomplish the goal of bringing in 2 or 3 new regular clients per year for each of the professionals.
If this is a poor assumption someone please let me know so I can adjust our expectations.
-
First, the correlation data is something I would pay attention to.
Second, since the longtail exact match and the majority of the other breakout terms from that very long URL appear to bring little or no traffic to the table - why would you bother to go against the data? (OK, the single word head terms have what looks like great traffic, but going after those is not a "new site" proposition in my view).
-
yep, 3 n's is a mistake. So you think the exactmatch.com is overkill for these keywords? Might be better to go with something shorter and more branded?
-
Hi Jesse,
First, I'm going to assume that the three n's in the URL you posted was a mistake?
So, having made that assumption, I think the philosophical debate is largely a moot point.
Generally, the intent of developing an exact match domain is to rank for the term or terms that carry exact match traffic volume.
The image below pretty much tells the story I think.
If you haven't yet found it, the tool is the SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool
-
Hi George, that's an interesting take on things. Can you give us any more background information on this or resources? Thanks!
-
I have to disagree with Ryan. 2 terms isn't max length URL can have. Always use as many characters in URL as it's necessary. There is no anything like "very long domain".
For example: minnnepolismassageandfitness.com will give you more domain SEO juice than minnnepolismassage.com
If you are concerned on search engine visits, use whole keyword in your domain. It will be easier to rank for keyword. But if you wish to receive direct visits (which I doubt), use user-friendly domains, keep it short and nice looking.
-
You want to stick to a maximum of 2 terms in your URL. Three is pushing it. Four words is too much.
Doing a google search for "minneapolis fitness" shows most of the top results do not have minneapolis nor fitness in the URL. You can freely try names such as "Sunshine Fitness" or whatever your business name is in an effort to brand the URL rather then attempt keyword matches.
If you really want a URL match then minneapolisfitness.net is available. While I strongly prefer a .com, I would prefer this particular .net over the URL you suggested.
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
-
Strange URL resulting a page
Hi, my friend has asked me to take a look at his site. I only know the basics of SEO so I'm learning along the way. He has some duplicate title errors showing in Moz, resulting to this page: https://www.domainname.com/about/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers This URL shows the 'About' page. I have tonnes of pages like this showing with really long URLs that result an actual page. Has anyone seen something like this before? I don't have a clue how this is showing the about page Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks James
On-Page Optimization | | Craze_Media0 -
Removing old URLs from Google
We rebuilt a site about a year ago on a new platform however Google is still indexing URL's from the old site that we have no control over. We had hoped that time would have 'cleaned' these out but they are still being flagged in HTML improvements in GWT. Is there anything we can do to effect these 'external' dropping out of the indexing given that they are still being picked up after a year.
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0 -
Domain sub-directory not performing
We've restructured our site over the past 6 months and I'm going to run you through the whole scenario as I would love any feedback you guys have. 6 months ago we had 2 websites http://boulders-climbing.com (climbing facility) and http://bouldersuk.com (shop). We made the decision to merge the websites and leverage the SEO on 1 site. Although boulders-climbing.com was the older and more established domain, the company wanted to use bouldersuk.com so a whole new website was designed and boulders-climbing.com was redirected to bouldersuk.com. The climbing facility website now sits at bouldersuk.com and the shop was moved to bouldersuk.com/climbing-shop with 301's for all shop pages. This has lead to a significant a increase in domain rank for bouldersuk.com and much better rankings for the climbing centre related terms. The desired effect has been achieved, well half of it anyway. The search rankings for bouldersuk.com/climbing-shop have never reached the previous heights and are still heading in the wrong direction, even though the overall domain ranking has increased by 50%. What can I do to get the SEO for /climbing-shop working again? We're adding fresh content to our latest news with links through to products and categories, all category pages have A grades. we are attempting to link build but it is much more difficult for e-commerce than for the facilities pages. Is the SEO of the main site hampering(masking?) the /climbing-shop? All feedback on the whole process would be much appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | benj450 -
Campaign set up as sub domain
When I set the campaigns up I used the sub domains now I question should I have used the root domain. Which is best sub or root.
On-Page Optimization | | PhilSmith230 -
How to handle long dynamic meta tags?
Hi All, I have a site that has upwards of 40 000 pages and I'm redeveloping it so really want to get some SEO elements spot on for the new development. Hoe do I go about handling the following: The user creates a title for their advert which I use as the meta title. The problem is titles are quite often longer that the accepted lengths. How should I handle this? String manipulation down to the desired size, leave it as is or is there another solution? The meta descriptionn is pulled from a summary they created as part of their profile. Is this the right way to do it? Any advice would be appreciated. Ross
On-Page Optimization | | Mulith0 -
Canonical URL problem
On page analysis wanted me to add a canonical url tag. However I added then re ran the on page analysis and it came up with an error. What is the proper way to add a canonical url tag in the head of an index page? ie. add a canonical tag to www.hompeage.com/index.html would it be ? Or should I ignore this for a home page? Because I add it then run the analysis again and get this? Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Canonical URL</dt> <dd>"http://www.ensoplastics.com/index.html"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd> <dd>So do I add it or not? If I don't I get a lower page rating if I take it off I get a higher page rating with room for improvement. </dd> </dl>
On-Page Optimization | | ENSO0 -
Negatives to using custom sub domain?
So - being photographers, we have our main website, but also, we use a hosted service for all our client galleries (www.zenfolio.com) So, in effect, we have two websites: Our main informational website Our client gallery/proofing website The client gallery has back links to our main website - so, when people are viewing their gallery, they can easily get back to our main site. We also have thrown a few of our preferred keywords in there for SEO purposes. The gallery has thousands of pages which link back to the main site. So.. the client gallery URL can either be: http://ourbusinessname.zenfolio.com OR we can have it so it uses our own domain, such as: http://gallery.ourbusinessname.com The question is, which domain name will benefit the back links more? Our custom subdomain (which links to our main domain) or, using the Zenfolio domain (which is external to our site). Or, is there no real difference either way? Or.. do I make no sense?
On-Page Optimization | | blitzna100 -
What is the recommended length for meta description?
Hello, I am sure this newbie question has been sent millions of times, but I couldn't find it with the new Q&A forum search... So, how many characters should I use in my description meta tag ? Thanks for sharing Loïc
On-Page Optimization | | mandinga0