{"id":11701,"date":"2016-07-19T12:22:19","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T09:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/?p=11701"},"modified":"2017-01-27T13:56:44","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T11:56:44","slug":"title-influence-on-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/11701\/title-influence-on-rankings\/","title":{"rendered":"The Title and URL Influence on Rankings – In-depth Study on 34k Keywords"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every site owner\u2019s dream (and goal) is to rank as high as possible for their target audience. Every search engine\u2019s dream (and goal) is to make sure that the most relevant websites rank the highest. But how is that relevancy built and interpreted? Does it have anything to do with what you say? That much we know to be true. Does it have anything to do with how (or where) you say it? That\u2019s what we set to find out.<\/p>\n

Having this in mind we\u2019ve conducted an in-depth research, with a set of 34k keywords which we analyzed back and forth to find out the importance of a keyword\u2019s occurrence in a title, URL, domain, subdomain and URI in rankings.<\/p>\n

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TL;DR<\/strong> – This is quite a large study. If you don’t have time to read it all, you can browse through the main take-aways.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\"The_Influence_of_Keywords_in_the_Title_and_URL\"<\/p>\n

Do all these characteristic matter? And if yes, how much? Even if these choices won\u2019t ultimately make a significant change in your rankings, they are bound to make you more relevant to your intended target audience. There are also other experimental studies, which we refer\u00a0to\u00a0below, showing that a generic, keyword-similar URL or domain can make a whole lot of a difference when it comes to the success of online marketing campaigns. Below you can find a list with the main conclusions of this research.<\/p>\n

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  1. The Methodological Approach – How We Did the Research<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Using a Keyword in the URL Will Make a Site Appear More Relevant for Google.<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Keyword Appearance in Title Makes a Clear Difference Between Ranking 1st or 2nd.<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Using a Keyword in the URL Can Get You Closer to Ranking 1st.<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. You Have a Chance of Ranking Better If Your Keyword Is Part of the Domain Name.<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Similarities Between Keywords and Subdomains Can\u2019t Predict Any Change in the Rankings.<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. If Your Domain Is an Exact Match for a Keyword, You Can Rank 1st Easier.<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Keyword Appearing in Both Title-Domain Boasts Impressive Results for the 1st and the 2nd Positions.<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. The More Concise the URL, The Greater the Chance to Rank Better.<\/a><\/li>\n
  10. SEO Friendly URLs Can Lead to Higher Perceived Relevance.<\/a><\/li>\n
  11. Other Relevant Studies<\/a><\/li>\n
  12. Take Aways
    \n<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n

     <\/p>\n

    So what should you do? If possible, try to get around including a relevant keyword in the title, domain or URL of your website. Our study shows that there is moderate effect suggesting a possible correlation between the presence of a keyword in one of these and a higher rank in the search engine results list for that keyword. Better still, you can try to use keywords in all three, or at least a combination of two of them. If not, then the domain should be your highest priority. Don\u2019t bother with the subdomain, though, that really seems to make no difference. And to truly maximize your chances of ranking as high as possible, you\u2019d do well to keep the URL concise. In fact, if you could ensure that URLs to your pages never go over 50-60 characters, that would be perfect.
    \n<\/span><\/p>\n

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    Does Google Count a\u00a0Keyword in the Title, URL or URI When Ranking a\u00a0Page?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

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    Google says no, but various experiments and observations say yes.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Using a keyword in the URL might simply make a site appear more relevant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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    Sure, Google will ultimately find it even if the keyword is buried deep inside the content on the site, but judging by this test<\/a>, it looks like thinks might be slightly better if said keyword is in a more visible place (such as a URL or URI, for instance). As a straight up observation, that makes sense, but it\u2019s important to keep things in perspective: experimental conclusions need to be backed up by quantitative analysis.<\/p>\n

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    The Methodological Approach – How We Did the Research<\/strong><\/h3>\n

     <\/p>\n

    First, let\u2019s clarify some methodological assumptions. Understanding the methodology is important, because this is a complex problem to unfold, one which is not quite conventional. So the statistical tools we used are not quite conventional either. Firstly, it’s important to know that all the research was conducted over the months of May and June 2016.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    We used a similarity algorithm based on the concept of the Levenshtein distance – a string metric measuring the difference between two sequences. It is probably the best algorithm to use when dealing with short strings of text. In our case, one of these strings was the keyword, while the other was the domain \/ title \/ URL. The Levenshtein distance can be roughly understood as the minimum number of edits required to change one word into the other. When normalized, this distance can be measured on a 1 to 100 scale (the value represents the fraction of the smallest over longest possible distance: ($str1_length – $levenshtein_distance) \/ $str1_length).<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    We applied this metric to no less than\u00a034368\u00a0keywords<\/span><\/span>. For each keyword we identified the first 20 positions in Google and checked the corresponding URLs. We then applied a Levenshtein-based analysis for the various comparisons we wanted to make in order to test the probability that there might be a relation between keyword and certain elements (URL, URI, title, domain, subdomain etc.) For each rank, this resulted in a score on the normalized scale, which we then interpreted according to the following thresholds: <30 means a small effect, between 30 and 60 means a moderate effect, and >60 means a large effect.<\/p>\n

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    Do Keywords in Titles Have Any Ranking Importance?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n