Help writing a particular URL slug
-
Hello, I work for an Theater news site.
We've drafted an interview piece where three actors (Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom, Jr, and Karen Olivo) discuss their participation in an upcoming show (tick, tick... BOOM), which is an autobiographical precursor to Jonathan Larson's hit Broadway musical, Rent. The show is playing for five days in the New York City Center's 'Encores' musical theater series event.
In the interview, the actors widely discuss Mr. Larson's impact on the theater community, who passed away suddenly in 2001. As you might imagine, the most popular keywords on Google trends are of Mr. Larson, the show name, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, a tony-winning composer.
We're considering slugs that represent several permutations of the above actor + show combinations (below), but we're struggling trying to balance a slug that appropriately explains the article, uses appropriate keywords, and limit them (to a count of 5, per google's recommendation).
Any suggestions?
miranda-olivo-odom-inside-tick-tick-boomlin-manuel-olivo-odom-inside-tick-tick-boomtick-tick-boom-encores-interviewjonathan-larson-tick-tick-boom-at-encores
-
David, thanks for your insight (you too Rand!).
Any chance I could email / call you directly to discuss the idea? There are some implementation issues we'd need to address on our site to be able to incorporate a system like this.
-
If it isn't too much work for your staff, I would consider branching off into individual actors interviews, instead of grouping them into one long page. This will allow for better optimization on each page, and better usability for traffic, since they dont have to scroll through a huge page with many interviews. At the bottom of each, have a link that allows users to access the next interview easily. This way, you are focusing on a wider scope of keywords, have multiple opportunities for rankings, and can set up a top-level menu item based around the event with links to the internal pages.
Something like:
DOMAIN.com/inside-tick-tick-boom -- landing page
DOMAIN.com/inside-tick-tick-boom/interviews
DOMAIN.com/inside-tick-tick-boom/interviews/actors_names
By using this method you also will have multiple opportunities for social sharing, since you have an increased number of pages each with their own share links.
Hope this helps!
-
OK first off, let me just say that wow, that sounds like an awesome job and a thrilling industry to work in! Getting to interview Broadway musical actors is just super cool Congrats!
Now on to the SEO... The URL itself likely isn't too much of a concern. It's a very minor element in the overall scheme of things. That said, I'd be thinking about how it might potentially be used as link anchor text (if folks, for example, cut and paste the URL without ascribing specific new anchor text - in which case the URL itself becomes the anchor). My suggestion would thus be to think about the 3-4 phrases you want searchers to type in to reach this specific page. The page is very unlikely to rank for specific actor, writer, or composer names, but it might well rank for something related to combinations of the show name and actor names.
For example, if someone searched for "leslie odom tick tick boom" in Google, you might have a good shot at ranking. If they searched for "tick tick boom" or for "leslie odom" or for "jonathan larson" the page almost certainly wouldn't rank. Thus, I'd urge you to find the combination of name(s) + show title that is likely to drive the most traffic. That may actually be something broader like /tick-tick-boom-actors-interviewed. In that scenario, anyone searching for tick tick boom interviews or tick tick boom actors broadly could see the slug and suspect it's the right one (and Google could, too). Using only a single actor's name might be limiting.
Hope that helps! For more on URL structuring, check out http://moz.com/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls (it's old but still very relevant).
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
-
Help - my site is losing rank fast and I don't know what I've done!
My site Easigrass.com had been ranking well but recently it's started to fall in the ranks. I don't know why but I've fallen 4 places on the last 2 months for the keyword 'artificial grass'. anyone willing to take a look and throw me there thoughts?
Keyword Research | | Easigrass1 -
Best way to find the best keywords to write Q&A
Hi All, Best way to find the best keywords to write Q&A I have a celebrity website where people ask questions about Movies and celebrities. Now how can i create some content based on keywords so i can get some better traffic? Or is this method a waste of time?
Keyword Research | | jomin740 -
Internal URLs competing for keyword
I have an affiliate site where we have reviews of bookmakers, which are optimized for the bookmakers name as a key word. We have seen a drop in rankings and at this point we are out ranked by a lot of pages including our own. We also have a community forum and write news and articles about the the bookmakers. The thing is, that these forum threads and articles often out rank our review pages, which are the pages we need people to land on in order to convert. This page: http://www.betxpert.com/bookmakere/bet365 is optimized for "bet365" and is at this point outranked by http://www.betxpert.com/artikel/ny-funktion-hos-bet365-afslut-vaeddemaal-foer-tid. This page actually links to the review. What should i do in order to increase ranks for my pages? Make the forum threads and articles crappy for the key word? Would it help to add a canonical link to the articles? Would it help to remove the meta tag for update time of the review, such that Google does not downrank for not being recent? -Rasmus
Keyword Research | | rasmusbang0 -
When targeting a particular keyword, how many articles should I write that target it?
I have a keyword phrase that's a high value target for us. Should I write just one - or several articles that target that keyword as their main focus? Thanks! Andrew
Keyword Research | | seowhiskey0 -
Choose domain name! Question..Help me.
Hi, i like to start the strong project like a jobs bord. My question is, i was thinking to buy a broad keyword domain or brand. From my experience, and seo strategy, i believe or ithink to start with brand name, unique brand name, and i can build more naturaly backlinks or all type of seos, maybe is better than a jobs domain. What do you suggest me?
Keyword Research | | leadsprofi0 -
Is there a way to search 400+ urls for a specific keyword?
I have a large list of URL's that need to be checked for a specific keyword. I've been doing them one at a time and it's painful. Is there a web based tool out there that can search many different URL's at once?
Keyword Research | | billnet0 -
Is it important to have exact keyword in your URL
I have researched exact keywords and noted a four word phrase which has fairly good numbers for exact keyword local searches a month with low competition. If I was to make it as my web address it would mean having www. (18 letters).co.uk Is it important to have the exact keyword in the URL for ranking purposes? Is an 18 letter web address either side of the www and .co.uk too long?
Keyword Research | | TCWorkouts0 -
Help selecting KWs based on their difficult to rank for and KW tool question
I've done all of my keyword research, and now I'm selecting the KW's. In a previous question, seomoz had answered to pick a mix of easy, medium, and difficult words to rank for. How do I know which are easy, medium, difficult? The KW Difficulty Tool is not very specific. Is the level of difficulty related to where the phrase pops up for my company in search results? Are hard words ones that you do not already rank in the top 50 search results? When selecting KWs should I choose words that rank already in the top 50 that I'd like to try to move up? Or look for NEW phrases/words not in the top 50 results? Also, when entering KW phrases int the KW Difficulty Tool, Rank Tracker, and in Campaigns - do I need to use quotation marks if it is a phrase? I noticed that the KW difficulty tool has different results if you use quotation marks. Lastly, The person who did SEO before me has a list of KWs he optimized for, would it be valuable for me to include his words in my On-Page optimization efforts?
Keyword Research | | aircyclemegan0