Is the Guardian Website Keyword Stuffing?
filed in SEO on Feb.27, 2009
While browsing the Guardian website I came across a story which had this fantastic URL:
The aim of having such a huge URL is that when someone links to the story (just like I’ve done), the anchor text is full of nice rich keywords which should help the website’s SEO. Â
Whilst I can’t argue that the keywords are all relevant, I wonder if it’s entirely necessary? Â In my opinion, it’s a variation on keyword stuffing. Â Also, Google has been known to devalue websites with lots of hyphens in the URL so their SEO attempt may actually backfire on them.
What do you think? Â Is it a legit SEO technique?
February 27th, 2009 on 10:06 am
It’s probably just the content management system which autogenerates titles.
Not only that but there are loads of pointless hyperlinks in the content. For example, an article which mentions women will link to guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/women or an article which mentions politics will link to guardian.co.uk/politics.
Is annoying users worth a couple of extra SEO points? They were doing ok before on Google.
February 27th, 2009 on 10:24 am
They’d be better generating the URL based on the title in that case. URL based on the keywords just looks a bit spammy.
Plus it’s huge! If that article is referred to in the printed press then nobody is going to sit any type that in!
February 27th, 2009 on 10:39 am
Ha, I noticed one of Charlie Brookers pieces the other week had a weird URL:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/19/fooddrinks-foodanddrink
Can you guess what the article was about?
But I agree with Matthew Cain, it’s more likely than not just how their CMS autogenerates URLs. Plus those pointless links drive me mad too.
February 27th, 2009 on 10:40 am
Defiantly keyword stuffed , otherwise the title would suffice
February 27th, 2009 on 10:40 am
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March 29th, 2009 on 1:08 am
Looks like they changed it. Someone must’ve seen that the title was ridiculous.