SEO News

Posted by randfish

It’s been a long time since we covered one of the most fundamental building blocks of SEO—the structure of domain names and URLs—and I think it’s high time to revisit. But, an important caveat before we begin: the optimal structures and practices I’ll be describing in the tips below are NOT absolutely critical on any/every page you create. This list should serve as an “it would be great if we could,” not an “if we don’t do things this way, the search engines will never rank us well.” Google and Bing have come a long way and can handle a lot of technical challenges, but as always in SEO, the easier we make things for them (and for users), the better the results tend to be.

#1: Whenever possible, use a single domain & subdomain

It’s hard to argue this given the preponderance of evidence and examples of folks moving their content from a subdomain to subfolder and seeing improved results (or, worse, moving content to a subdomain and losing traffic). Whatever heuristics the engines use to judge whether content should inherit the ranking ability of its parent domain seem to have trouble consistently passing to subdomains.

That’s not to say it can’t work, and if a subdomain is the only way you can set up a blog or produce the content you need, then it’s better than nothing. But your blog is far more likely to perform well in the rankings and to help the rest of your site’s content perform well if it’s all together on one sub and root domain.

For more details and plenty of examples (in the post and comments), check out 
this recent Whiteboard Friday on the topic.

#2: The more readable by human beings, the better

It should come as no surprise that the easier a URL is to read for humans, the better it is for search engines. Accessibility has always been a part of SEO, but never more so than today, when engines can leverage advanced user and usage data signals to determine what people are engaging with vs. not.

Readability can be a subjective topic, but hopefully this illustration can help:

The requirement isn’t that every aspect of the URL must be absolutely clean and perfect, but that at least it can be easily understood and, hopefully, compelling to those seeking its content.

#3: Keywords in URLs: still a good thing 

It’s still the case that using the keywords you’re targeting for rankings in your URLs is a solid idea. This is true for several reasons.

First, keywords in the URL help indicate to those who see your URL on social media, in an email, or as they hover on a link to click that they’re getting what they want and expect, as shown in the Metafilter example below (note how hovering on the link shows the URL in the bottom-left-hand corner):

Second, URLs get copied and pasted regularly, and when there’s no anchor text used in a link, the URL itself serves as that anchor text (which is still a powerful input for rankings), e.g.:

Third, and finally, keywords in the URL show up in search results, and 
research has shown that the URL is one of the most prominent elements searchers consider when selecting which site to click.

#4: Multiple URLs serving the same content? Canonicalize ’em!

If you have two URLs that serve very similar content, consider canonicalizing them, using either a 301 redirect (if there’s no real reason to maintain the duplicate) or a rel=canonical (if you want to maintain slightly different versions for some visitors, e.g. a printer-friendly page).

Duplicate content isn’t really a search engine penalty (at least, not until/unless you start duplicating at very large scales), but it can cause a split of ranking signals that can harm your search traffic potential. If Page A has some quantity of ranking ability and its duplicate, Page A2, has a similar quantity of ranking ability, by canonicalizing them, Page A can have a better chance to rank and earn visits.

#5: Exclude dynamic parameters when possible

This kind of junk is ugly:

If you can avoid using URL parameters, do so. If you have more than two URL parameters, it’s probably worth making a serious investment to rewrite them as static, readable, text.

Most CMS platforms have become savvy to this over the years, but a few laggards remain. Check out tools like 
mod_rewrite and ISAPI rewrite (for IIS) to help with this process.

Some dynamic parameters are used for tracking clicks (like those inserted by popular social sharing apps such as Buffer). In general, these don’t cause a huge problem, but they may make for somewhat unsightly and awkwardly long URLs. Use your own judgement around whether the tracking parameter benefits outweigh the negatives.

Research from a 
2014 RadiumOne study suggests that social sharing (which has positive, but usually indirect impacts on SEO) with shorter URLs that clearly communicate the site and content perform better than non-branded shorteners or long, unclear URL strings.

#6: Shorter > longer

Shorter URLs are, generally speaking, preferable. You don’t need to take this to the extreme, and if your URL is already less than 50-60 characters, don’t worry about it at all. But if you have URLs pushing 100+ characters, there’s probably an opportunity to rewrite them and gain value.

This isn’t a direct problem with Google or Bing—the search engines can process long URLs without much trouble. The issue, instead, lies with usability and user experience. Shorter URLs are easier to parse, to copy and paste, to share on social media, and to embed, and while these might all add up to only a fractional improvement in sharing or amplification, every tweet, like, share, pin, email, and link matters (either directly or, often, indirectly).

#7: Match URLs to titles most of the time (when it makes sense)

This doesn’t mean that if the title of your piece is “My Favorite 7 Bottles of Islay Whisky (and how one of them cost me my entire Lego collection)” that your URL has to be a perfect match. Something like

randswhisky.com/my-favorite-7-islay-whiskies

would be just fine. So, too would

randswhisky.com/blog/favorite-7-bottles-islay-whisky

or variations on these. The matching accomplishes a mostly human-centric goal, i.e. to imbue an excellent sense of what the web user will find on the page through the URL and then to deliver on that expectation with the headline/title.

It’s for this same reason that we strongly recommend keeping the page title (which engines display prominently on their search results pages) and the visible headline on the page a close match as well—one creates an expectation, and the other delivers on it.

For example, above, you’ll see two URLs I shared on Facebook. In the first, it’s wholly unclear what you might find on the page. It’s in the news section the BBC’s website, but beyond that, there’s no way to know what you might find there. In the second, however,
Pacific Standard magazine has made it easy for the URL to give insight into the article’s content, and then the title of the piece delivers:

We should aim for a similar level of clarity in our own URLs and titles.

#8: Including stop words isn’t necessary

If your title/headline includes stop  words (and, or, but, of, the, a, etc.), it’s not critical to put them in the URL. You don’t have to leave them out, either, but it can sometimes help to make a URL shorter and more readable in some sharing contexts. Use your best judgement on whether to include or not based on the readability vs. length.

You can see in the URL of this particular post you’re now reading, for example, that I’ve chosen to leave in “for” because I think it’s easier to read with the stop word than without, and it doesn’t extend the URL length too far.

#9: Remove/control for unwieldy punctuation characters

There are a number of text characters that become nasty bits of hard-to-read cruft when inserted in the URL string. In general, it’s a best practice to remove or control for these. There’s a great 
list of safe vs. unsafe characters available on Perishable Press:

It’s not merely the poor readability these characters might cause, but also the potential for breaking certain browsers, crawlers, or proper parsing.

#10: Limit redirection hops to two or fewer

If a user or crawler requests URL A, which redirects to URL B. That’s cool. It’s even OK if URL B then redirects to URL C (not great—it would be more ideal to point URL A directly to URL C, but not terrible). However, if the URL redirect string continues past two hops, you could get into trouble.

Generally speaking, search engines will follow these longer redirect jumps, but they’ve recommended against the practice in the past, and for less “important” URLs (in their eyes), they may not follow or count the ranking signals of the redirecting URLs as completely.

The bigger trouble is browsers and users, who are both slowed down and sometimes even stymied (mobile browsers in particular can occasionally struggle with this) by longer redirect strings. Keep redirects to a minimum and you’ll set yourself up for less problems.

#11: Fewer folders is generally better

Take a URL like this:

randswhisky.com/scotch/lagavulin/15yr/distillers-edition/pedro-ximenez-cask/750ml

And consider, instead, structuring it like this:

randswhisky.com/scotch/lagavulin-distillers-edition-750ml

It’s not that the slashes (aka folders) will necessarily harm performance, but it can create a perception of site depth for both engines and users, as well as making edits to the URL string considerably more complex (at least, in most CMS’ protocols).

There’s no hard and fast requirement—this is another one where it’s important to use your best judgement.

#12: Avoid hashes in URLs unless absolutely essential

The hash (or URL fragment identifier) has historically been a way to send a visitor to a specific location on a given page (e.g. Moz’s blog posts use the hash to navigate you to a particular comment, like 
this one from my wife). Using URL hashes for something other than this, such as showing unique content than what’s available on the page or wholly separate pages is generally a bad idea.

There are exceptions, like those Google enables for developers seeking to use the hashbang format for dynamic AJAX applications, but even these aren’t nearly as clean, visitor-friendly, or simple from an SEO perspective as statically rewritten URLs. Sites from Amazon to Twitter have found tremendous benefit in simplifying their previously complex and hash/hashbang-employing URLs. If you can avoid it, do.

#13: Be wary of case sensitivity

A couple years back, John Sherrod of Search Discovery 
wrote an excellent piece noting the challenges and issues around case-sensitivity in URLs. Long story short—if you’re using Microsoft/IIS servers, you’re generally in the clear. If you’re hosting with Linux/UNIX, you can get into trouble as they can interpret separate cases, and thus randswhisky.com/AbC could be a different piece of content from randswhisky.com/aBc. That’s bad biscuits.

In an ideal world, you want URLs that use the wrong case to automatically redirect/canonicalize to the right one. There are htaccess rewrite protocols to assist (
like this one)—highly recommended if you’re facing this problem.

#14: Hyphens and underscores are preferred word separators

Notably missing (for the first time in my many years updating this piece) is my recommendation to avoid underscores as word separators in URLs. In the last few years, the search engines have successfully overcome their previous challenges with this issue and now treat underscores and hyphens similarly.

Spaces can work, but they render awkwardly in URLs as %20, which detracts from the readability of your pages. Try to avoid them if possible (it’s usually pretty easy in a modern CMS).

#15: Keyword stuffing and repetition are pointless and make your site look spammy

Check out the search result listing below, and you’ll see a whole lot of “canoe puppies” in the URL. That’s probably not ideal, and it could drive some searchers to bias against wanting to click.

Repetition like this doesn’t help your search rankings—Google and Bing have moved far beyond algorithms that positively reward a keyword appearing multiple times in the URL string. Don’t hurt your chances of earning a click (which CAN impact your rankings) by overdoing keyword matching/repetition in your URLs.

Best of luck with all your URL creation and optimization efforts! Please feel free to leave any additions, ideas, or observations in the comments below.

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Where do they start? 

Why, Google of course.

Seven out of 10 participants started their search for home insurance on Google. 

There was a mixture of general searches for home insurance, and the use of Google to find the brand they had in mind. 

• 25% performed a general search query (86% of these used the words ‘home insurance’ in the query string).
• 46% went straight to a comparison site, either typing the site name into a search engine or by direct URL entry.
• 29% went straight to a provider site, either typing the site name into a search engine or by directly entering the URL.

If we look at the content of the searches, we can see that Moneysupermarket, Aviva and Directline were the most popular brands that users searched for. 

These are brands that advertise heavily on TV, so does this explain the fact that searchers had these brands front of mind when they searched? 

In such a competitive market, we can now see why, even though insurance providers and comparison sites invest in building brand awareness, they need to work hard even when customers search for the brand. 

Take a look at this result, for moneysupermarket: 

A brand search such as this suggests the customer intends to visit said brand, and since it is top of the organic results this should be easy.  

However, there are a couple of obstacles in the way, not least of which is Google’s own comparison service. This is positioned above the organic ads but, craftily, doesn’t look too much like an ad itself. 

This, added to the Compare The Market PPC ad, means that moneysupermarket is forced to spend probably more than £1 per click to make sure its brand traffic goes to the right place. 

Organic or PPC? 

The eventual choice of results to click is somewhat surprising, or at least it is if you assume that everyone knows the difference between paid and organic results.

These were user tests, and it was observed that 56% of people chose organic results, and 44% chose PPC.  

We’ve published the results of research into this before, with one study finding that 36% of people didn’t know PPC ads were ads. 

Dan Barker and myself followed this up with a user survey last year, which found that around 10% of people weren’t aware that Google even carried ads. 

Of course, there are pros and cons with each research methods, but the key takeaway is that at least 10% of users are clicking results they don’t know are ads.  

Is this any surprise when ads are looking less and less like ads? 

They used to be shaded, which provided a clear distinction between the top ads and organic results (apart from Google’s comparison results). 

Now, we have the yellow ‘ad’ label, but otherwise the ads look identical to organic results. 

Yes, you might think the ad label would provide a clue but, as eye tracking studies will tell you, subtle changes can make a big difference to user behaviour, and sometimes seemingly obvious elements can be overlooked. 

10% of users in the study expressed or demonstrated a preference for organic search results and chose the even if the company also had a PPC ad listed.

However, this still leaves a lot of people who click the PPC ad when the brand is top of the organic listings anyway. 

As the table below from Google’s Keywords Planner shows, this means some of these brands are paying a lot for clicks even when they have climbed the organic listings for such a competitive term. 

Indeed, the moneysupermarket SEO team should be congratulated for reaching the top for ‘home insurance’ (with bonus points for use of markup) though the effect is perhaps diluted by the paid results. 

In summary

This study suggests that, even after companies have worked hard to get their brands at the front of searchers’ minds, they still have a lot of work to do to get them from Google’s search results to their website.

Also, we can see how Google profits from being the go-between here. 

In the next post, I’ll look at what home insurance brands need to do on-site to make the most of this traffic. 

Posted by MorganChessman

Building marketing strategies for small businesses is one of my favorite things. In my first marketing role, I worked in the marketing department for a small company before moving on to Distilled, where I’ve been lucky enough to continue working with small businesses that have enormous potential. Despite the various industries, locales, and personalities, one of the prevailing similarities between them is that small businesses often don’t position their company or use the web as effectively as they could. While this is partially due to the time and resource crunch small business owners feel, it’s also because, beyond building a website, they don’t know where to begin. 

It doesn’t have to be so overwhelming though. I’ll walk you through the preliminary steps I take my small business clients through.

1. Define the brand

A number of the small companies I’ve worked with didn’t have a brand. That’s not to say that they didn’t have a name, a website, and a logo. It’s that they didn’t stand for something. 

For example, what comes to mind when you think of Apple? Innovative and well-designed products? Exactly. So many small businesses are built from an individual wanting to work for themselves or because they see an opportunity to improve on an existing product. They figure, build the website and they will come. 

But it’s not that way. You need a brand. As we’ve seen throughout history, the companies that have staying power have a brand, something that differentiates them from their competitors, something that people connect with and, coupled with good products and customer service, something that keeps people coming back.

1. Think about your origin story

2. Talk to your customers

3. Do competitor research

4. Compile all information and develop a brand

2. Review the website content and language

Although most small businesses have websites, it’s necessary for owners to take a step back and review the website through the eyes of a consumer. Too often people assume that website visitors have a certain level of company knowledge, or that they speak the same jargon. That’s not always the case. For example, the aforementioned tech company originally wrote so vaguely about their services using insider jargon that neither target audience understood the company’s mission. Once the text was rewritten with specific consumers in mind, people started coming to the owner and saying “Now that you’ve redone your website, I finally understand what your company is about.” In order to not find yourself in that position, ask yourself:

1. Does the website have the information my target audience needs?

2. Am I using the language my target audience would use?

3. Develop overarching marketing strategy

Content strategy

In the online marketing world, content is king. Google wants you to deliver value to your site visitors and unique content is one way of going about this. Building a content strategy isn’t easy though. You don’t want to write the same thing that everyone else in your industry is writing about. There’s no unique value in that, and because your site likely isn’t strong from a domain authority perspective (yet!), you’ll usually find it difficult to rank against the big sites who are writing the same content. 

Instead, you’ll need to take stances on issues or solve your clients’ unique problems, giving them a reason to keep coming back to your site. If you can do this, great, but don’t just write content for the sake of it. If you’re a small ice cream shop for example, it’s going to be difficult to write content that’s on-brand and relevant to your audience. In this case, focus on other marketing strategies.

Paid

Social

Email

Local

Promotions

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