Short Links for Multiple Keyword Sites

Google never sees vanity URLs. Their main purpose is to create convenience for an audience. It can be a unique link that is completely removed from your main URL. What separates a vanity link from a sub-domain or micro-site is that it is never tagged by the search engine.

Short links can be used to help your search engine optimization efforts when you have multiple locations or services you advertise. It helps to create less noise.

Managing Keywords

Many companies provide more than one service or product. That means you need online branding for every line the business represents. In the past, the solution to marketing all of your product/service lines was to create individual sites for each. A prime example can be seen with HVAC companies.

Let’s say your company deals with plumbing, air conditioning, and electrical services. These are all very different jobs; each with their own set of keywords to promote. It’s a complex group of words to combine, so you need all the help you can get.

Building three sites means THREE times the work. You have to write content and build links on each page and then continuously manage them all. Not to mention the domains would not share authority with each other. In fact, if you use the same keywords, you are essentially competing against yourself.

Vanity URLs Over Websites

So, if you run an HVAC business and don’t have the time to manage three websites, you must seek an alternative to uniquely promoting each service. That’s where vanity URLs come in. It’s a prime solution to give you the extra options while still capitalizing on SEO best practices.

For example, say your main site is hvac.com.

You still want to purchase domains for each service, like hvacplumbing.com, hvacair.com, and hvacelectric.com. However, instead of building a website on each domain, you will be using the URLs to create vanity links.

Your biggest area of business should serve as a primary keyword. Say for this case, it’s plumbing. You would use this as the main word to build your digital brand on.

Then, plant the keywords related to your other services (air conditioning and electrical) on their appropriate pages off of the main site. Those would look something like:

www.hvac.com/airconditioning

www.hvac.com/electrical

Never duplicate efforts with keywords on the web. In search engine optimization (SEO) terms, this is considered “self-cannibalization.” It’s essentially creating a circular loop and competition with yourself.

Self-Cannibalization

The reason why vanity links are so effective for multiple keyword sites is that they keep a business from duplicating efforts and making the search engine gods mad.

Google will consider it “keyword flooding” if you have multiple sites repeating the same keywords. It’s a huge SEO faux pas and one that will put your page in the bottom ranks.

So, while the plumbing keywords have been assigned to the homepage, you don’t want to produce a landing page that repeats these words or phrases.

If you must develop content that talks about plumbing (your main area of business) it may be a good time to consider creating a rel=canonical tag. This indicates the page on which this tag appears is a duplicate. It will tell a search engine the version you want to appear on the results page.

This way, you are not fighting with your own pages (and sitemaps) for keyword prominence. It would hurt the chances of either page to rank. Self-cannibalization is one of the most common mistakes made in SEO. Fortunately, with a vanity link, it’s one of the easiest to fix.

Managing multiple keyword sites is a difficult task for SEO. Using vanity links helps to circumvent the obstacles presented when you seek to promote several types of services online.

The idea is to never compete with yourself. Always think carefully about where the company is placing its words and how it can affect the way people find you in a search.