Does it matter if url does not match title?

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   NateB11posted 3 years ago

   I think this has been covered before, just wanting to see if anyone has anything new on the subject. Does it matter if the url of the article is different from the title? I've always thought that title takes precedence and will be what Google reads and ranks.

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      lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Both are important, the title being more important. If the URL is about butterflies in home gardens and you write about dragonflies hovering above home ponds that is not a good idea.
      
      It is always ideal to have it perfect. But age on an article is important so I would not delete an old article just for the sake of the URL, but I would if it were a new article. This is also my experience here on HP with some Dengarden hubs.

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         NateB11posted 3 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks, Brandon. It's a semantic difference. One word is different but it's a synonym. In other words, the one word that is different in the url is the same thing, different word, for the word in the title. When I have time I might delete it and copy/paste the article in a new one with a matching url.

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            lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

            Yes, as Glenn says it is a good idea to keep the URL broad in case of new articles, but not too broad. A synonym in the URL may actually be a good thing. I would not change it.

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               NateB11posted 3 years agoin reply to this

               I heard about semantic search years ago and I wonder if it's relevant to this topic.
               
               https://www.searchenginejournal.com/sem … 037/#close
               
               This part -  "Include keywords in your title tags, URL, body, header tags, and meta tags, as long as it fits naturally" -  seems to imply you can have different words in url and title but it all has to be natural to the context and subject.

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                  Glenn Stokposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                  That’s all correct. The most crucial part of what you said is that keywords should fit naturally.

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                  lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                  Yes, that is the reason I suggested you do not bother with a change if the URL contains a synonym.

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   Glenn Stokposted 3 years ago

   I covered this topic in one of my tutorials, where I mentioned that we should make the URL more generalized than the title when we publish a new article. That leaves us the flexibility to change the title later without making it look like a mismatch to the URL.
   
   As Brandon said, “both are important.” So in my opinion you still want to use keywords in both the title and URL. But they don’t need to match verbatim.

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      NateB11posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks, Glenn. Makes sense, kind of what I was thinking.

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   jansharesposted 3 years ago

   Good review of this topic and great advice. My understanding is that the URL is what strengthens over time in the searches since it doesn't change. I've changed titles numerous times but it's similar enough to the URL. I guess the trick is having the best key words in both the title and the URL, especially as Brandon said, if they are synonyms. It helps broaden the hits you'll get in searches.

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