URL Optimization
It has long been know that it helps to have your keyword phrase within your URL. Webmaster and SEO professional have known this for years and never give the idea of URL optimization a second thought. For years now everyone has been thinking about PageRank, One-Way Links and anchor text and all the other factors that make up SEO today.
Over the years Google and webmasters have gone back and forth in their never ending game to get over on one another. I’m sure you know the game well.
- Google starts counting links – webmasters start building link farms.
- Google strikes down link farms – webmasters start reciprocal linking.
- Google devalues reciprocal links – webmasters start to buy one-way links.
As the game goes on over the years Google has less and less to use in it’s efforts to rank websites that the webmasters can’t manipulate to their advantage.
One of the things that makes SEO such an interesting endeavor is that the search engines do not disclose the factors they use to rank webpages in order to stay one step ahead of the webmasters. This is why proper analysis of search results and an open mind is an important part of good SEO.
The Power Of URL Optimization
Google is always changing the way they rank webpages and some time around 2009 to 2010 they made a subtle change that very few people seem to have noticed. Since a website address is not something that can be changed on a whim like anchor text or meta tags, Google increased the importance of the URL in it’s ranking algorithm.
If a webpages URL matches the search query letter for letter Google will rank it above other highly optimized webpages. This is true even if the webpage has no PageRank and the other webpages have a PageRank of 6 or even 7. For example. go to Google.com and search with the following phrase:
As of 2010 the search results were as follows:
www.powayrealestatesearch.com/
www.homesalessandiego.com/north-county-inland/poway/
realestate.yahoo.com/California/Poway
www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Poway_CA
www.trulia.com/CA/Poway/
www.homes.com
www.roost.com/real-estate/CA/Poway/
www.loopnet.com/California/Poway-Commercial-Real-Estate/
Here is a screen shot I took back in 2010 when I was first looking at URL optimization and the results are much the same even to this day.
Rank #1 In Google for ‘Poway Real Estate Search’
Now let’s take a look at the top ranked website. The first thing you should notice is that the search query is exactly the same as the domain name of the website, a perfect example of URL optimization.
FYI, search engines treat a ‘space’, a ‘period’, a ‘underscore’ and ‘no space’ all the same. For example, the following phrases are all considered identical in the eyes of a search engine;
powayrealestatesearch
poway-real-estate-search
poway.real.estate.search
poway real estate search
poway.real-estate-search
# 1 Site For ‘Poway Real Estate Search’
www.powayrealestatesearch.com/
* PageRank 0
* Inbound links 0
* Domain less than 2 years old
* Absolutely No On Page Optimization For Query
* Alexa: no data
* Google cache: did not match any documents
* WayBack Machine: No mention
No big deal you might think. But if we do a little research you may be surprised what we find. The #2 and lower ranked sites are the top ranking Real Estate websites with PageRank as high as PR8! These webpages are highly optimized to say the least and use URL optimization, but not very well.
- No Google PageRank!
- No Inbound Links!
Here is a screen shot of a backlinks discovery analysis of the site www.powayrealestatesearch.com/. As you can see the number of inbound links has gone from few to even fewer. In most cases this would spell trouble for a sites ranking.
- No On-Page Optimization!
Look at the SEO Page Elements for this site and you can see that nothing has been done to optimize the pages for ‘Poway Real Estate Search’ much less any other keyword phrases.
So this website has had no SEO except URL optimization.Now you may be thinking…
That’s great but one keyword phrase is not enough!
And you are right! One keyword phrase would be nice, but you can’t expect a website to be successful because it ranks #1 in Google for a single keyword phrase, even if it’s a good one. The domain name of example website: powayrealestatesearch.com/ has a vital limitation that prevents it from being of much use beyond the single keyword phrase ‘Poway Real Estate Search‘.
Structure of a URL
The structure of a domain name is very basic and straight forward. The www portion of a URL is pretty much a thing of the past and you only wee it used because people are used to it. But for all intents and purposes the www is no longer a factor. This is very important if we wish to optimize our URL within the domain portion of a website address. If www was still used we would not be able to use sub-domains and that would be the end of any piratical use of URL optimization.
Bad for URL Optimization – {www.keywordphrase.com}
This style of URL is limited to just one phrase and it’s a good thing it’s no longer used.
Better for URL Optimization – {keywordphrase.com}
This style of URL is no better or worse than the one above, but it at lease the potential for use as a sub-domain as long as it is a primary keyword phrase.
Best for URL Optimization – {secondary.keywordphrase.com}
The structure of this URL is wide open for optimization as long as the domain name is a primary keyword phrase that was selected specifically for use with a secondary phrase for optimization.
Keyword Phrases in URLs
Here is an example of a primary keyword phrase – ‘real estate search‘. This is the type of phrase that will work well with URL optimization.
And here is an example of a secondary keyword phrase – ‘poway real estate search‘ that will not work well with URL optimization. As you can see below the red text limits the ability to use the phrase as a secondary keyword phrase in any way.
Bad -{poway-real-estate-search.com}
The optimal URL is going to be built upon a domain name that uses only a primary keyword phrase that allows for the building of secondary keyword phrases as sub-domains.
Perfect -{poway.real-estate-search.com}
Unfortunately this is not a perfect world and you would be hard pressed to find a domain like real-estate-search.com or anything like it that would work for URL optimization. Fortunately we don’t need to worry about about getting a perfect domain name. While we can’t add anything on to the left side of the domain without messing up our optimization plans, we can add something on to the right side of the phrase without any problem. So since we can’t get:
‘real-estate-search.com’
Or real-estate-search.net, real-estate-search.biz, real-estate-search.info… and on and so on. How about:
http://real-estate-search-blog.com/
Now we can optimize our URL for a great deal of valuable keyword phrases like:
So with careful planning and the right domain name, it is possible to optimize our website for more than one keyword phrase using URL optimization. In fact, look at what we can target:
Anaheim real estate
Antioch real estate
Apple Valley real estate
Bakersfield real estate
Chula Vista real estate
Corona real estate
El Cajon real estate
Elk Grove real estate
Escondido real estate
Fontana real estate
Fresno real estate
And that is just the start of what URL optimization can do for this domain name. We could optimize a webpage for every city, state and county in the entire U.S.A. But that brings us to the next issue, just how would someone go about creating a sub-domain along with a webpage for each of these phrases?
