Keywords in url - specific case question
-
There are a bunch of questions about keywords in the url and so far what I've gathered is that it's good to have them but keep it simple so it doesn't look stuffed.
I'm working on redesigning some sites that were originally setup by a group who had no understanding of SEO (or perhaps I should say a misunderstanding) and spent a lot of time stuffing keywords EVERYWHERE. In some cases they weren't too far off but in others I think they just went overboard.
One of the areas I'm trying to fix are the paths which leads to the following concerns.
One of the sites has a basketball section and through the use of the Adwords keyword tool they determined that most people are searching for "basketball hoops".
My first question is, how reliable are the monthly search numbers in the Adwords keyword tool? Are they accurate enough to warrant forming keyword strategies based on the results?
As it relates to the url issue, the current tree for the basketball section of the site looks like this:
- /basketball (the landing page for the whole section, there are other sport specific pages as well)
- /basketball/hoops (goes nowhere. not sure why they didn't just go to /basketball-hoops/x for other pages)
- /basketball/hoops/72in-backboards (the systems are split into three different backboard sizes, these pages group them onto one overview page per size)
- /basketball/hoops/72in-backboards/specific-basketball-goal (the actual basketball goal details page with options to buy and such)
So what I'm wondering about this setup is:
- does having /basketball/hoops take care of having the "basketball hoops" search term or would it be more effective to switch to /basketball-hoops?
- If it's fine to leave it at /basketball/hoops, do you think it would be beneficial to create an actual page for that path? We found that actually more people search for "basketball basket" than "basketball hoops" so maybe that would be a good page to try to make use of that term and explain maybe why people think "basket" instead of "hoop" and why we call ours "goals" or something.
I tend to navigate pages by deleting path arguments and I hate when I land on a nonexistent path so I'm leaning toward changing the paths but just don't know if it's worth it at this point.
Additionally, on one of the other sites, we have a domain that is the main keyword we want to rank for: swingsets.com
The other company I mentioned then decided to put all of the product pages under: swingsets.com/swing-sets/{category}/{set-height}-{'swing-set'|'playset'|'swingsets'|'play-set'|etc...}/combo{#}
So that comes out to look something like this: swingsets.com/swing-sets/outback/5ft-playsets/combo2
I've never liked that path setup. It looks stuffed to me, especially once they start using '5ft-swing-sets' and '6ft-play-set' on other product pages. It's inconsistent which is another issue I have since I tend to surf by path.
Another issue with that setup is the final argument of combo{#} but there's nothing I can really do about that because they call the products out as combinations. The only actual product name is the "outback" part.
I've been trying to come up with a better path setup for a long time now but again I'm concerned that I may just be wasting my time. The only thing I did do was make the height section consistently {height}-playsets. Is that good enough or should these paths remove /swing-sets from the beginning?
The actual /swing-sets page is a good and valuable landing page but then I'm not sure if it remains valuable to keep it in the paths for the product pages afterward.
Any insight into this dilemma would be appreciated. I've been stewing over this for a long time and my reasoning always becomes circular since I can see plenty of reasons for keeping them the way they are and simplifying them.
-
It's indeed not something people would look for..
Very difficult problem you have there, at least it's good that you're making changes to it.
Don't forget to set a 301 redirect to the new page on any page you delete and if there is no new page then to the most relevant or the home page.From what you told me i don't think it is an option to rebuild the entire site. The structure which is now there is way too difficult to change as much as it should in order for the best results.
The swingset website doesn't have very big descriptions either. I think you can make some good improvements on that area at least. There is one webshop in particular which i always use as a reference for how much content you should have on a product and that is vat19.com.
Not only is their marketing strategy perfect for their target audience. They offer so much information about their products. Images, text, specifications and video.
I hope i helped you at all with your problems and if you have any other questions or need more advice or a brainstorm partner let me know either in this thread (if it's relevant) or in a new thread (the you could send me a private message to let me know where to find it :)) or you could of course send me a private message directly, but then other people couldn't benefit from the problems and solutions we found.
Good luck with .. well everything
-
For basketball, yes, definitely. I'm actually in the process of changing them over on the dev site right now. Going to go with /basketball-hoops for the basketball pages. Just makes more sense.
As for swing sets, we have two main categories, outback and playhouse. Those two categories have a sub category that appends XL to the category name (such as outback-xl). Each category has combos 1 thru 5 and sometimes multiple or none of a combo (meaning you could have combo1, combo2, combo2-2, combo2-3, combo4 but no combo5).
I think the last time I did a count there were something like over 200 specific product combo pages. If we used AJAX it would reduce the actual pages to 12 (4 categories (including xl) and 3 heights per category). We have content issues with that site like you wouldn't believe and doing that would go a long way to fixing part of that problem but then it creates another even larger set of problems.
I think as a first step we will definitely eliminate /swing-sets from the paths of our product pages, though we'll need to keep the swing set overview page at /swing-sets. So once someone visits the overview page at swingsets.com/swing-sets, the sub pages would be at swingsets.com/category instead of swingsets.com/swing-sets/category.
Not sure there is really anything that we can do about the rest of the url though.
One thought I have after looking at your suggestion would be to go from swingsets.com/outback/5ft-playset/combo2 to swingsets.com/outback-5ft-playset/combo2
But again, I'm not sure if that makes any difference. I don't think anyone is searching for "outback" in terms of looking for a wooden swing set so I don't think we'd really benefit any by changing the / to a - in this case.
Actually, I just used the Adwords keyword tool to see and found that no one is searching for any iteration of {height} {playsets|play sets|swingsets|swing sets} so I don't think having that in the url helps any at all. Maybe having "playset" does but compared to all of the other SEO issues with that site I think it may not be worth worrying over.
So maybe swingsets.com/outback-5ft/combo2 would be just as useful. I think that's easier to remember. We do have landing pages for outback and playhouse but I'm not sure that should matter when making the path to the products. I think /outback-5ft looks better than /outback/5ft
-
That does make the situation quite difficult.
Are there a lot of different combinations possible?You could create a product page for every combination. This way your dealers can still direct the phone customers to the appropriate URL and you would still have a clean URL structure. For example: www.domain.com/category/outback-5ft-playset.
This still isn't perfect but as far as i can see it's the best option given the weird circumstances.
Hmm, all links are pointing to the home page with the brand name. That doesn't seem like a natural link profile and that is something which could get penalised.
But one problem at a time. Do you think the URL structure suggestion i provided will work?
-
No that was perfectly understandable.
From looking at our link profile, every single link we have to our site is to the home page and use our brand name as the anchor text, which explains a few other concerns I had about this particular site...
On the topic of AJAX, I had been considering, with the other site (swingsets.com), just getting rid of the "comboX" argument entirely and making the /outback/5ft-playset page use AJAX to load the different combos. Figured I could use a hash to make the page load a specific combos when first visited.
The concern I have with doing that is that our dealers use our site a lot to direct phone customers which means I'd still have to have links to each combo on the site. That makes me wonder if it wouldn't be a pain in the ass for users to remember a url (not that it's easy right now...) or if Google would ignore the # and think I have 200+ internal links split between 6 pages.
No matter what I do to the URL, there must be a specific "page" for each combination.
-
I think you would benefit from it because it removes difficulty from the URL. Furthermore you will get found better on 'basketball hoops' instead of on 'basketball' and 'hoops'. (Minimal difference though).
Just think about the user experience mostly. Keep the URL's as short and readable as possible. That you have to make combinations could be done on a single page with some AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) instead of doing it on multiple pages.
That way your URL structure would be cleaner and the user experience would be enhanced. Furthermore you remove the possibility that people are linking to multiple URL's like now. So you will have more links to a single page and that will improve your ranking.
Was anything unclear?
-
That would only apply if there are links to the non-page /basketball/hoops, right?
So if the links are only for /basketball and there are none for /basketball/hoops we wouldn't really benefit from a change to basketball-hoops?
-
Well, if there are links pointing to /basketball and there are also links pointing to /basketball/hoops then you would rank better on /basketball-hoops. Because of the redirects from the two old URL's to the one new URL you are creating a page which get more links. As long as the content on the page is of decent quality of course.
If you stick to the structure: www.domain.com/basketball-hoops/72in-backboard then the plural word is not a problem because it is the category name.
It would be awesome if they did that except that a lot of people would misuse it and SEO would be one giant scam (as it used to be with the meta keywords tag and cloaking and so).
-
Thanks for the response.
So does that mean that the path /basketball-hoops would rank better than /basketball/hoops?
One of my major concerns about the whole thing is just how much impact the keywords have in the url. I figure it doesn't come close to comparing to using them in the page title, H1 title and page content in terms of determining what the page ranks for, but just how much impact does it make when they are in the url as well?
I've considered dropping /hoops from the path and appending -basketball-hoops to the product name (/basketball/72in-backboard/dc72e1-basketball-hoops) but my two main concerns are: it seems odd to refer to a page about a single product using a plural word (feels forced), and we're back to having a long url that may not make any difference with or without the added keyword text.
Wouldn't it be awesome if Google would provide importance values to things like this that we could see?
-
If you can create a really good page for the basketball/hoops, then make a really good page for that.
If you can't create something good for that then you should change it to basketball-hoop. It will take care of being found on the query 'basketball hoops'.You should take a look at how many links are pointing to /basketball and /basketball/hoops. Make sure you set 301 redirects if you change the URL structure.
The second website path is a little more difficult.
swingsets.com/swingsets? That is what i would call stuffing + users don't like long urls.If it's possible try to stick to the following structure: www.domain.com/category/product-name.
I know it's difficult since you are doing something with combinations.I'll think about it some more and if i come up with something i'll let you know.
Hope i was remotely helpful at this moment.
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
-
How would a redesign, content update and URL change affect ranking?
Hi guys, I have a question that I suspect there is no simple true or false answer to, but perhaps someone has done the same thing as we're pondering wether or not to do? We're taking over an existing site that ranks very well on all the important keywords and is obviously very well liked by Google. The site is today hosted on a sub-domain (xxx.domain.com). When taking over, we'll have to redesign the site and recreate most of the content on the site (unique). The site structure, URLs, incoming links etc. will remain exactly the same. Since we are recreating the site, we also have the opportunity to move the site off the sub-domain and on to the main domain (domain.com/xxx - 85/100 Moz rank) and do a 301 Permanent Redirect on all old URLs. Our long-time experience is that content on the main domain, ranks way better than the sub-domain. The big question is wether or not Google will punish us for both changing the content and the location of the site at the same time? Cheers!
Web Design | | mattbs
Matt0 -
Is it ok to redirect an old URL to new URL with anchor tag?
Ex. OLD URL - http://www.mysite.com/shoes/red/description NEW URL - http://www.mysite.com/shoes/red#desc Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | esiow20130 -
Weird url backslashing action...
Hi guys this is more of a technical question. Has anyone seen this before in a url www.domain.com/\page\ i'm referring to the forward slash / followed by a backslash \ resulting in /\ Any idea why this happens?
Web Design | | Immanuel0 -
Major URL changes in new site launch
Hey Guys - we recently launched a new website for a client. Prior, all of their URLs were dynamic via an old-school Cold Fusion CMS. We basically had to rewrite 90% of the sites URLs (site is like 300 pages). The new URLs are SEO friendly and the on-page SEO is strong; but the page rank/authority is starting from scratch from these pages and placement has decreased more most of the new pages with competitive keywords. We set up all of the 301 redirects properly and are actively monitoring in Google Webmaster Tools. **Anything else I can do to lessen the pain and get these pages higher page rank/authority sooner rather than later?**Thanks for all of your help.
Web Design | | NobleStudios0 -
Website Redesign 301 Question
Hey Moz gang, I have a question that I believe I know how I'm going to handle, but just wanted some feedback from the Moz community on best practices. At my company, we're going through a site redesign. At the moment, our site is deeper than it should be with many one-off feature pages. For example, we have a Features page that then links to individual pages for each specific feature. One goal we have set for the redesign is a condensing of the pages in order to make the site more user-friendly, easy to manage and content rich. My question is this. We have a lot of these individual pages that I want to essentially kill and merge into one page. It is okay (best practice) to 301 all of those individual feature specific pages to the single Features page since that is now where all of that content lives?? I want to retain the link juice that those pages have gained over time, but I don't want to get penalized for too many 301's to a single page. Any advice or previous experience would be awesome 🙂 Thanks, Lance
Web Design | | RobinBryant10 -
Homepage Title Question? Multi-Keywords or All Encompassing Keyword
Okay so I am currently redesigning my company's webpage. I am making it responsive and giving it a more up to date look with newer features, etc. A facelift, basically. While updating the site i'm also doing some on-page optimization here and there, and am curious about the page title for my homepage. My company offers video production, web development & design, and web marketing. While we do offer each service individually, we are really trying to sell the combination of all three services to our clients and show them how they can work together effectively. Now my question is, in my homepage title, should i list each service offering keyword (which is what i do now) like this : "Video Production - Web Design - Web Marketing • Company Name" Or, should i try to find one keyword that kind of sums up what we do, like this: "Magic All-Encompassing Keyword • Company Name" I'm thinking that since three sort of unrelated keywords are in the page title, it may be viewed as over-optimizing and we won't see as good of results as just focusing on one keyword, which leads me to think that i should try to sum all of our services into one "all-encompassing" keyword such as "media production", which isn't the best choice, i'm just throwing it out there for the sake of this discussion. Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Web Design | | RenderPerfect0 -
Two URLs with same content
We recently had a client who own multiple brands switch from having multiple urls to having a single domain with multiple sub domains. I've posted an example below to better explain. My question is the original url is still functional, so there are two urls with identical content, yet I haven't been getting a duplicate content error. Also, would a rel canonical link be beneficial in this case since the duplicate content is on two separate domains? My thoughts were to put a 301 redirect on the original pages so they permanently forward to the new sub-domain format. Is this the best course of action? If not, what would you recommend? Example: Original URLs
Web Design | | BluespaceCreative
www.example1.com
www.example2.com
www.example3.com
www.parentcompany.com New URLs
example1.parentcompany.com
example2.parentcompany.com
example3.parentcompany.com
www.parentcompany.com Let me know if this I need to clarify anything in better detail.
Thanks in advance!0 -
The primary search keywords for our news release network have dropped like a rock in Google... we are not sure why.
Hi, On April 11th, a month after the farmer update was released for U.S. users of Google, the primary keywords for ALL our sites significantly dropped in Google. I have some ideas why, but I wanted to get some second opinions also. First off, I did some research if Google did anything on the 11th of April... they did. They implemented the farmer update internationally, but that does not explain why our ranks did not drop in March for U.S. Google users... unless they rolled out their update based on what site the domain is registered in... in our case, Canada. The primary news release site is www.hotelnewsresource.com, but we have many running on the same server. EG. www.restaurantnewsresource.com, www.travelindustrywire.com and many more. We were number 1 or had top ranks for terms like ¨Hotel News¨, ¨Hotel Industry¨, ¨Hotel Financing¨, ¨Hotel Jobs¨, ¨Hotels for Sale¨, etc... and now, for most of these we have dropped in a big way. It seems that Google has issued a penalty for every internal page we link to. Couple obvious issues with the current template we use... too many links, and we intend to change that asap, but it has never been a problem before. The domain hotelnewsresource.com is 10 years old and still holds a page rank of 6. Secondly, the way our news system works, it´s possible to access an article from any domain in the network. E.G. I can read an article that was assigned to www.hotelnewsresource.com on www.restaurantnewsresource.com... we don´t post links to the irrelevant domain, but it does sometimes get indexed. So, we are going to implement the Google source meta tag option. The bottom line is that I think we put too much faith in the maturity of the domain... thinking that may protect us... not the case and it´s now a big mess. Any insight you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Do you think it was farmer or possibly something else? Thanks, Jarrett
Web Design | | jarrett.mackay0