How Important Is Your URL In Search?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, May 21, 2009 Comments (4)

Your URL is more than just a keyword-based ranking tool. It can be a useful ranking edge if you use your keyword in the right way. But it’s so much more than that. It’s also a branding item. And if you use it as both a branding item and a ranking tool then it’s even more powerful. Well, it may have just become even more important. According to Marketing Pilgrim, Google tweaking is Suggest feature:

Google’s also added navigational suggestions–so if you start typing the name of a company or brand, you’ll more likely see the actual URL appear in your suggested items.

This is actually a useful feature, but I think it will have a much more powerful effect if people are typing in a keyword and Google recognizes an authoritative brand based on that keyword. For instance, let’s say you own http://www.widget.com (made up for this example) and a searcher queries “widget”. Will Google Suggest show the url http://www.widget.com in its results to be more helpful to searchers? That’s what it seems like Andy Beal is saying.

How important do you see your URL now?

Comments (4) Category: Search Engines

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4 Comments

Comment by Agent SEO

Made Thursday, 21 of May , 2009 at 1:31 pm

Having a quality keyword in your URL can be really helpful in SEO. If you have a new website with a good keyword in your URL, it may help overcome some of the growing pains associated with early rankings for new sites.

In addition, having a keyword in the URL may help make up for a lack of brand recognition early on.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Thursday, 21 of May , 2009 at 1:37 pm

@Agent SEO – This is very true! There is a balance of a very good keyword friendly URL and long term brand. Having a domain that overdoes it by keyword stuffing is not effective as well…

Comment by Idigital SEO

Made Monday, 25 of May , 2009 at 8:05 am

I have been seeing this in the local search quires. But not as an absolute like most things in Google’s local search arena. I do feel that this will play a role when added to the seo mix for your clients.

Is Branding the new authority?

I think it will play a major role as Google tries to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak!

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Monday, 25 of May , 2009 at 4:30 pm

@Idigital SEO – Thanks for the comment and reading! It should be interesting to see how Google continues to factor in brand and authority…