Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Domain.com/XXX or domain.com/blog/XXX ?
-
i have a business and a side blog on the website. is it fine to turn my blog to domain.com/XXX instead of domain.com/blog/XXX?
does it in anyway of these affect the SEO?
-
When it comes to formatting URL's, I think it's important for the URL's to make as much sense as possible from a hierarchical stand point. Moz has a really good article on the optimal URL structure. So you can sort of think of the blog keyword as the subcategory keyword from the example in that article.
Further more, look at how both moz and Matt Cutts structure their blog URL's.
http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog
https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/
Hope that helps!
-
Hi,
URL format and length it's a ranking signal - that means shorter URLs are "more important" but only if there is a taxonomy in place. If all your URLs are directly on the root - then this doesn’t play any role. So if your domain has a lot of content and some or most is structured domain/folder/ and domain/folder/folder etc - then moving from /blog to the root will bring some signals that this content might be important.
But note that having short urls on the root directly it's not a roadmap to good rankings
On the user side - if the content is "blog related" - blogging, articles, opinions etc - then I would keep it on the /blog/ as it can influence the CTR in SERPs - that also depending on the queries of course and if it will match what users are expecting - a blog thing or some other resource ...
Hope it makes sense.
Cheers.
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
-
Does google sandbox aged domains too?
Hello, i have a question. Recently i bought a domain from godaddy auction which is 23 years old and have DA 37 PA 34 Before bidding i check out the domain on google using this query to make sure if pages of this website are showing or not (site:mydomain.com) only home page was indexed on google. Further i check the domain on archive web the domain was last active in 2015. And then it parked for long about 4 years. So now my question does google consider these type of domain as new or will sandboxed them if i try to rebuild them and rank for other niche keywords ? Because its been 4 weeks i have been building links to my domain send several profile and social signals to my domain. My post is indexed on google but not showing in any google serp result.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Steven231 -
Is domain redirection a good method for SEO?
I have a question and need suggestion from you guys. I’ve searched for my question on Google but don’t get exact information what I need. Maybe I can’t search perfectly.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kamishah
Let me explain my confusion:
I’ve checked backlink profile of a website. He is not using his main domain while doing comment backlink. He put his another domain while doing comment backlink. The another domain redirect to the main domain. Why he use another domain while doing comment backlink?
Is it helpful to get better rank on Google? For example: My Main Domain = solutionfall.com
Another Domain= xyz.com (It redirect to solutionfall.com)
He just uses xyz.com while doing comment backlink. Thank You so much1 -
Dealing with links to your domain that the previous owner set up
Hey everyone, I rebranded my company at the end of last year from a name that was fairly unique but sounded like I cleaned headstones instead of building websites. I opted for a name that I liked, it reflected my heritage - however it also seems to be quite common. Anyway, I registered the domain name as it was available as the previous owner's company had been wound up. It's only been in the last week or two where I've managed to have a website on that domain and I've been tracking it's progress through Moz, Google & Bing Webmaster tools. Both the webmaster tools are reporting back that my site triggers 404 errors for some specific links. However, I don't have or have never used those links before. I think the previous owner might have created the links before he went bust. My question is in two parts. The first part is how do I find out what websites are linking to me with these broken URL's, and the second is will these 404'ing links affect my SEO? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mickburkesnr0 -
Can I leave off HTTP/HTTPS in a canonical tag?
We are working on moving our site to HTTPS and I was asked by my dev team if it is required to declare HTTP or HTTPS in the canonical tag? I know that relative URL's are acceptable but cannot find anything about HTTP/HTTPS. Example of what they would like to do Has anyone done this? Any reason to not leave off the protocol?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Shawn_Huber0 -
Do Ghost Traffic/Spam Referrals factor into rankings, or do they just affect the CTR and Bounce Rate in Analytics?
So, by now I'm sure everyone that pays attention to their Analytics/GWT's (or Search Console, now) has seen spam referral traffic and ghost traffic showing up (Ilovevitaly.com, simple-share-buttons.com, semalt.com, etc). Here is my question(s)... Does this factor into rankings in anyway? We all know that click through rate and bounce rate (might) send signals to the algorithm and signal a low quality site, which could affect rankings. I guess what I'm asking is are they getting any of that data from Analytics? Since ghost referral traffic never actually visits my site, how could it affect the CTR our Bounce Rate that the algorithm is seeing? I'm hoping that it only affects my Bounce/CTR in Analytics and I can just filter that stuff out with filters in Analytics and it won't ever affect my rankings. But.... since we don't know where exactly the algorithm is pulling data on CTR and bounce rate, I guess I'm just worried that having a large amount of this spam/ghost traffic that I see in analytics could be causing harm to my rankings.... Sorry, long winded way of saying... Should I pay attention to this traffic? Should I care about it? Will it harm my site or my rankings at all? And finally... when is google going to shut these open back doors in Analytics so that Vitaly and his ilk are shut down forever?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seequs2 -
Why does expired domains still work for SEO?
Hi everyone I’ve been doing an experiment during more than 1 year to try to see if its possible to buy expired domains. I know its considered black hat, but like I said, I wanted to experiment, that is what SEO is about. What I did was to buy domains that just expired, immediately added content on a WP setup, filled it with relevant content to the expired domain and then started building links to other relevant sites from these domains.( Here is a pretty good post on how to do, and I did it in a similar way. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2297718/How-to-Build-Links-Using-Expired-Domains ) This is nothing new and SEO:s has been doing it for along time. There is a lot of rumors around the SEO world that the domains becomes worthless after they expire. But after trying it out during more than 1 year and with about 50 different expired domains I can conclude that it DOES work, 100% of the time. Some of the domains are of course better than others, but I cannot see any signs of the expired domains or the sites i link to has been punished by Google. The sites im liking to ranks great ONLY with those links 🙂 So to the question: WHY does Google allow this? They should be able to see that a domain has been expired right? And if its expired, why dont they just “delete” all the links to that domain after the expiry date? Google is well aware of this problem so what is stopping them? Is there any one here that know how this works technically?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sir0 -
Can I 301 redirect old URLs to staging URLs (ex. staging.newdomain.com) for testing?
I will temporarily remove a few pages from my old website and redirect them to a new domain but in staging domain. Once the redirection is successful, I will remove the redirection rules in my .htaccess and get the removed pages back to live. Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow20130 -
DropBox.com High PA & DA?
"What’s up with these dl.dropbox.com High PA & DA links?" You know, It's frustrating to spend almost an entire day getting a few great link backs... then to find out your competitor has hundreds of cheap & easy link backs for the keyword you are going for with greater Authority [according to SEOmoz's OSE]. So I ran a search on one of our top competitors in Open Site Explorer to gather an idea of where the heck they are getting all of their links. Please feel free to copy my actions so you can see what I see. Run a search in OSE for www[dot]webstaurantstore[dot]com. Click on the ‘Anchor Text’ Tab. Click on the first Anchor Text Term, which should be ‘restaurant supplies’ :: Then it will expand, click on the ‘View more links and details in the inbound links section.’ As you scroll down the list you will notice that they have a bunch of linking pages from dl.dropbox.com, all of them are .pdb files, for their targeted Anchor Text, restaurant supplies. Q: So my question is can someone please elaborate on what .pdb files are and how they are getting this to work for them so well? Also you will notice, on the expanded Anchor Text Page, that their 6<sup>th</sup> most powerful link for this phrase (restaurant supplies) seems to be linked straight from a porn site, I thought Google does not rank adult sites like this? Q: For future reference, does anyone know legitimate websites to maybe file an SEO manipulation complaint? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Burkett.com0