: SEO: targeted or generic URLs performance I'm working on a website that sells DYI products. 2 of the products categories are save-paint and save-cabling. Since the products can help you save

@Kristi941

If you choose option 1 you will achieve higher results sooner since the competition for those keywords will likely be lower.

If you choose option 2 you will potentially reach more users once you rank well for that search term but it will take you longer to achieve success as the competition will be tougher.

I always recommend to start by targeting easier keywords to rank well for because it gets you very targeted traffic and potentially more opportunities to earn incoming links to your pages. Then as your site starts to rank well for those phrases, and long tail keywords, you can start to optimize for the more competitive phrases.

In your example you can target save-money by creating pages using that in the URL and then using canonical URLs to prevent the duplicate content. Canionical URLs act like 301 redirects in that they do transfer PageRank, and thus likely incoming links, to the main page.


Google will understand that the
duplicates all refer to the canonical
URL. Additional URL properties, like
PageRank and related signals, are
transferred as well. (source).


So by proxy you can boost the rankings of your save-cabling page by using a save-money-on-cabling page with canonical URLs. (This requires you getting backlinks with the proper anchor text to actually work)

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