Title and Url Agreement

[CPollock]

In the case of trying to hit a wide taxonomy, is it better to keep your title and URL in agreement, or to vary them slightly for exact search matching.

For instance this blog post which has the following url:

http://www.simplifiedbuilding.com/blog/build-your-own-standing-desk/

has the title "Make a Stand Up Desk - Better Working, Longer Living"

The ideas is that build and make are similar words and "stand up" and "standing" are also similar.

So what is the better way to go?

[SanketPatel]

Hi,

I have seen your URl and title according to my suggestion if you are using standing instead of stand up is better for your page optimization because standing word has good keyword density in your page body. It is placed in your content and H1. It is better to use standing word in title also instead of "stand up". you can use "standing desk " as your keyword.

[CPollock]

So you're saying that the H1 should "agree" with the keyword density and that would be a better approach.

What about the aspect of varying taxonomy.  Does anyone have any thoughts about this?

[mcluna]

Since many studies now see the H1 as having far much less impact (but certainly a bit) I would recommend the following based on anecdotal search index data, "light scientific" studies around H1 impact, the impact of a title for sharing and semantic clustering:

1. Write the page title/H1 with sharing in mind first and search a close second. (given the decreased emphasis on H1s) and the increased weight of sharing.

1B. At this level of detail I would go for the fun "clicky" title for CTR increases.

2. Consider that google (in this day) sees a very clear relationship between 'stand up desk' and "standing desk'. It's just as likely that these variations support each other as much or better than repeating the same term. In your copy, I'd say that even the word "sitting" in (it's very opposition) is related to and supports your "standing" targets.

3. Your URL answers one query while your title/H1 responds to a slightly different query increasing your halo of search reach. At this point I like the  semantic cluster rising between your URL and title.  And you've got juicy related terms like "working" in the title. This carries through in your content.

4. "Good content" and natural content will have variations on target terms, related terms etc.. thus we can infer perceived content quality to go up (since you're not overly focused on term repetition)

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "varying taxonomy" but variance is much more human and natural  than uniformity of every component down the page. But the link below seems relevant although there's tons of great SI articles out there that should also help with your question.

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1224698

" text within each node indicates a higher relevance of the materials to the taxonomic classification."

Hope that's of some help.