Keyword in Domain AND Title. Yes or No?

[RetBit]

We're working on a new buildout, and this one is really important to us. We've put a lot of resources into it. Before we launch, we want the structure to be just right... and this one question is nagging at me. How to structure urls? Consider these two options.

The fictitious domain is "icesurfing.org". Including all 50 states in the keyword, there are nearly one million searches per month for "ice surfing [state]". We have a page for each state to focus on this traffic. But how would you structure the urls and titles?

1. **icesurfing.org/state **
2. icesurfing.org/ice-surfing-state

One concern is that the duplicate keywords in option 2 seem redundant, and a little spammy. When presented with google search, the matching tags are not as clean.

1. Texas - IceSurfing.org
2. Ice Surfing Texas - IceSurfing.org

But Yoast automatically suggests option 2. Is this really the best practice? Is there are definitive article on this?

THANK YOU!

[giaciccone]

I've had a similar scenario with Yoast - re: adding the site name (in this case, site URL) to the title automatically, but not really registering that fact when you use the plug-in on each page/post.

If it were me, I'd advise against 2, because you're right, it does look kind of redundant & spammy. OR, if you want, you can turn the setting off that automatically adds the site name at the end of every single one of your titles, and then just add it manually so that Yoast does register it. In WP, these settings can be found in the Titles & Metas section of your Yoast SEO plugin (accessible from the menu on the left, right under SEO's dashboard).

I hope that helps!

[RetBit]

I agree, the second is not as clean. But what is better for google? Keyword: Ice Surfing Nevada

Yoast says #2 is better because the exact match for the keyword is in the title.

#1 looks cleaner, but we're relying on the domain name to complete the keyword. Most of the keyword (Ice Surfing) has been left out of the page title and slug.

1. icesurfing.org/nevada
2. icesurfing.org/ice-surfing-nevada

Thanks!!

[Everett]

If you had one page about ice surfing I could understand putting it in the URL. But if you expand this strategy out to all pages on a domain about ice surfing then it is going to get pretty redundant. I'd go with #1.

[giaciccone]

Agreed. ^

Like I said, you have the option to manually put your site name (icesurfing.com) at the end of every title in Yoast - so that Yoast actually counts it when giving you a red, yellow, green analysis for each page/post. There is a way to turn off the automatic feature (which, if automatic, Yoast will not count it, dinging you for not having your keyword in the title, despite the fact that once it's published, it actually will be). I hope that makes sense?

[Everett]

I was writing about URLs. I think it's fine to have your brand name in most or all title tags, though I'm not sure I'd apply that to an exact-match domain like yours without adding the .com too (as in " - IceSurfing.com" not "- Ice Surfing".