SEO
A Complete Guide for SEOs
URL parameters or query strings are the part of a URL that typically comes after a question mark (?) and are used to pass data along with the URL. They can be active parameters that modify page content or passive parameters that are mostly used for tracking and do not change the content.
They are made up of key-value pairs, where the key tells you what data is being passed and the value is the data you’re passing, such as an identifier. They look like ?key=value but may be separated by ampersands (&) like ?key=value&key2=value2 if there is more than one pair.
In this guide, we’ll be covering what you need to know about URL parameters.
How parameters are used
As I mentioned in the intro, parameters can be active or passive. Let’s look at some examples of each.
Active parameters
Active parameters modify the content of the page in some way.
Filter. Removes some of the content, leaving more specific content on the page that a user wants to see. An example of this is faceted navigation in e-commerce.
?color=yellow
Sort. Reorders the content in some way, such as by price or rating.
?sort=highest_rated
Paginate. Divides content into a series of related pages.
?p=2
Translate. Changes the language of the content.
?lang=de
Search. Queries a website for information that a user is looking for.
On our search engine, yep.com, we use the key “q” for the query, and the value contains info about the user query.
?q=ahrefs
Passive parameters
Passive parameters do not change the content. They are typically used for tracking. Let’s look at some examples of each.
Affiliate IDs. Passes an identifier used to track where sales and signups come from.
?id=ahrefs
Advertising tags. Tracks advertising campaigns.
?utm_source=newsletter
Session IDs. Identifies a particular user. It’s not common on modern websites to use session IDs to track users.
?sessionid=12345
Video timestamps. Jumps to the designated timestamp in a video.
?t=135
SEO implications
URL parameters can cause a number of different issues when it comes to SEO, especially in cases where multiple parameters are used. Here are some of the problems you may encounter.
Passive parameters can cause issues with duplicate content. Typically, you want them to be crawled, and each page should have a canonical set to the main version.
There may be times where you want to block these parameters from being crawled completely using robots.txt—but only in situations where you may have issues with crawl budget. We’ll cover this more later.
Google will choose a version of the page to index in a process called canonicalization, and signals such as links will consolidate to that indexed version.
Active parameters may create pages with near-duplicate content or content that is very similar to other content. They may also be completely different content. You’ll need to check what your parameters are actually used for.
Internal links
You should avoid passive parameters like those used for tracking on internal links (links from one page on your site to another).
This is still an all-too-common practice on larger sites, but I want to emphasize that this is an old and outdated practice that you should not be doing.
Most analytics systems have event tracking you can use instead that still records the data without adding parameters to your URLs.
It’s fine to use active parameters on internal links in most cases.
Crawling
Infinite URL paths with parameters or tons of different combinations can cause issues with crawling. Keep a consistent order, and don’t have paths that allow for adding additional parameters.
You can easily find potentially infinite paths using the Depth report under the Structure Explorer tool in Site Audit. It’s not common for websites to have 9+ levels, so this is a strong indicator that there may, in fact, be infinite paths or some other issue.
Google will make adjustments as it recognizes infinite paths or certain patterns when crawling. It will try to limit the crawling of URLs that it thinks won’t be useful or are repetitive.
Internationalization
URL parameters are sometimes used for international websites. These are listed as an option for locale-specific URLs. But even Google says it’s not recommended. It adds another layer of complexity where more things can go wrong. You also won’t be able to geo-target these URLs in Google Search Console.
E-commerce
Parameters are commonly used in e-commerce for everything—from tracking, to pagination, to faceted navigation. These topics can be pretty complex, so I recommend reading through the blog posts I linked to better understand them.
JavaScript
There’s a growing trend where people are using # instead of ? as the fragment identifier, especially for passive parameters like those used for tracking. This is generally not a good idea. But in specific cases, it may be OK to do this to replace unnecessary parameters. I tend to recommend against it because of all of the issues.
The problem is anything after a # is ignored by servers, and a lot of systems simply will not or cannot recognize parameters using a #.
Additionally, # already has a designated use case, which is to scroll to a part of the page. This is done on the client side, and JavaScript devs may also use it for “routing” to a page with different content.
Auditing
It’s a good idea to check what parameters are used on your site. In Site Audit’s Page Explorer tool, you can search for URLs that contain a question mark (?).
You can use the advanced filters to find pages with multiple parameters or to start excluding parameters to help you identify all the various parameters used on your website.
Once you know what parameters are used, I recommend checking a few of the pages to see what the parameters actually do.
You can also check the Duplicates report for exact or near-duplicates. The visual makes it easy to see if you have a lot of versions of the same or similar pages and whether or not they have matching canonical tags to choose a preferred version. You can click into each cluster to get more information.
There’s also an option under “Bulk export” that lets you export all of the duplicate content at once. I find this option easier to use for larger sets of data.
Controlling parameters
In the past, Google had a URL parameter tool in Google Search Console where you could choose how to treat different parameters based on whether or not it changed the page content. The tool was deprecated in early 2022. Here’s what Google had to say about it:
When the URL Parameters tool launched in 2009 in Search Console’s predecessor, Webmaster Tools, the internet was a much wilder place than it is today. SessionID parameters were very common, CMSes had trouble organizing parameters, and browsers often broke links. With the URL Parameters tool, site owners had granular control over how Google crawled their site by specifying how certain parameters affect the content on their site.
Over the years, Google became much better at guessing which parameters are useful on a site and which are —plainly put— useless. In fact, only about 1% of the parameter configurations currently specified in the URL Parameters tool are useful for crawling. Due to the low value of the tool both for Google and Search Console users, we’re deprecating the URL Parameters tool in 1 month.
While not mentioned, I suspect that some users might have been hurting themselves with the tool. I ran into this in the past where someone put in a wrong setting that said the content did not change, but it did. This knocked a few hundred thousand pages out of the index for that site. Whoops!
You can let Google crawl and figure out how to handle the parameters for you, but you also have some controls you can leverage. Let’s look at your options.
Canonical tags
A canonical tag can help consolidate signals to a chosen URL but requires each additional version of a page to be crawled. As I mentioned earlier, Google may make adjustments as it recognizes patterns, and these canonicalized URLs may be crawled less over time.
This is what I’d opt for by default. But if a site has a ton of issues and parameters are out of control, I may look at some of the other options.
Noindex
A noindex meta robots tag removes a page from the index. This requires a page to be crawled. But again, it may be crawled less over time. If you need signals to consolidate to other pages, I’ll avoid using noindex.
Blocking in robots.txt
Blocking parameters in robots.txt means that the pages may still get indexed. They’re not likely to show in normal searches.
The problem is that these pages won’t be crawled and won’t consolidate signals. If you want to consolidate signals, avoid blocking the parameters.
Site Audit
When setting up a project in Site Audit, there’s a toggle in the crawl settings called “Remove URL Parameters” that you can use to ignore any URLs with parameters.
You can also exclude parameterized URLs in the crawl setup using pattern matching.
Sidenote.
Fun fact: We only count the canonicalized version of pages toward your crawl credits.
Final thoughts
Just to summarize, URL parameters have a lot of different use cases, and they may or may not cause issues for your site. Everything is situational.
Message me on Twitter if you have any questions.
SEO
Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey
Understanding the impact of your content at every touchpoint of the customer journey is essential – but that’s easier said than done. From attracting potential leads to nurturing them into loyal customers, there are many touchpoints to look into.
So how do you identify and take advantage of these opportunities for growth?
Watch this on-demand webinar and learn a comprehensive approach for measuring the value of your content initiatives, so you can optimize resource allocation for maximum impact.
You’ll learn:
- Fresh methods for measuring your content’s impact.
- Fascinating insights using first-touch attribution, and how it differs from the usual last-touch perspective.
- Ways to persuade decision-makers to invest in more content by showcasing its value convincingly.
With Bill Franklin and Oliver Tani of DAC Group, we unravel the nuances of attribution modeling, emphasizing the significance of layering first-touch and last-touch attribution within your measurement strategy.
Check out these insights to help you craft compelling content tailored to each stage, using an approach rooted in first-hand experience to ensure your content resonates.
Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to content measurement, this webinar promises valuable insights and actionable tactics to elevate your SEO game and optimize your content initiatives for success.
View the slides below or check out the full webinar for all the details.
SEO
How to Find and Use Competitor Keywords
Competitor keywords are the keywords your rivals rank for in Google’s search results. They may rank organically or pay for Google Ads to rank in the paid results.
Knowing your competitors’ keywords is the easiest form of keyword research. If your competitors rank for or target particular keywords, it might be worth it for you to target them, too.
There is no way to see your competitors’ keywords without a tool like Ahrefs, which has a database of keywords and the sites that rank for them. As far as we know, Ahrefs has the biggest database of these keywords.
How to find all the keywords your competitor ranks for
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Enter your competitor’s domain
- Go to the Organic keywords report
The report is sorted by traffic to show you the keywords sending your competitor the most visits. For example, Mailchimp gets most of its organic traffic from the keyword “mailchimp.”
Since you’re unlikely to rank for your competitor’s brand, you might want to exclude branded keywords from the report. You can do this by adding a Keyword > Doesn’t contain filter. In this example, we’ll filter out keywords containing “mailchimp” or any potential misspellings:
If you’re a new brand competing with one that’s established, you might also want to look for popular low-difficulty keywords. You can do this by setting the Volume filter to a minimum of 500 and the KD filter to a maximum of 10.
How to find keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t
- Go to Competitive Analysis
- Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
- Enter your competitor’s domain in the But these competitors do section
Hit “Show keyword opportunities,” and you’ll see all the keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t.
You can also add a Volume and KD filter to find popular, low-difficulty keywords in this report.
How to find keywords multiple competitors rank for, but you don’t
- Go to Competitive Analysis
- Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
- Enter the domains of multiple competitors in the But these competitors do section
You’ll see all the keywords that at least one of these competitors ranks for, but you don’t.
You can also narrow the list down to keywords that all competitors rank for. Click on the Competitors’ positions filter and choose All 3 competitors:
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Enter your competitor’s domain
- Go to the Paid keywords report
This report shows you the keywords your competitors are targeting via Google Ads.
Since your competitor is paying for traffic from these keywords, it may indicate that they’re profitable for them—and could be for you, too.
You know what keywords your competitors are ranking for or bidding on. But what do you do with them? There are basically three options.
1. Create pages to target these keywords
You can only rank for keywords if you have content about them. So, the most straightforward thing you can do for competitors’ keywords you want to rank for is to create pages to target them.
However, before you do this, it’s worth clustering your competitor’s keywords by Parent Topic. This will group keywords that mean the same or similar things so you can target them all with one page.
Here’s how to do that:
- Export your competitor’s keywords, either from the Organic Keywords or Content Gap report
- Paste them into Keywords Explorer
- Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
For example, MailChimp ranks for keywords like “what is digital marketing” and “digital marketing definition.” These and many others get clustered under the Parent Topic of “digital marketing” because people searching for them are all looking for the same thing: a definition of digital marketing. You only need to create one page to potentially rank for all these keywords.
2. Optimize existing content by filling subtopics
You don’t always need to create new content to rank for competitors’ keywords. Sometimes, you can optimize the content you already have to rank for them.
How do you know which keywords you can do this for? Try this:
- Export your competitor’s keywords
- Paste them into Keywords Explorer
- Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
- Look for Parent Topics you already have content about
For example, if we analyze our competitor, we can see that seven keywords they rank for fall under the Parent Topic of “press release template.”
If we search our site, we see that we already have a page about this topic.
If we click the caret and check the keywords in the cluster, we see keywords like “press release example” and “press release format.”
To rank for the keywords in the cluster, we can probably optimize the page we already have by adding sections about the subtopics of “press release examples” and “press release format.”
3. Target these keywords with Google Ads
Paid keywords are the simplest—look through the report and see if there are any relevant keywords you might want to target, too.
For example, Mailchimp is bidding for the keyword “how to create a newsletter.”
If you’re ConvertKit, you may also want to target this keyword since it’s relevant.
If you decide to target the same keyword via Google Ads, you can hover over the magnifying glass to see the ads your competitor is using.
You can also see the landing page your competitor directs ad traffic to under the URL column.
Learn more
Check out more tutorials on how to do competitor keyword analysis:
SEO
Google Confirms Links Are Not That Important
Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed at a recent search marketing conference that Google needs very few links, adding to the growing body of evidence that publishers need to focus on other factors. Gary tweeted confirmation that he indeed say those words.
Background Of Links For Ranking
Links were discovered in the late 1990’s to be a good signal for search engines to use for validating how authoritative a website is and then Google discovered soon after that anchor text could be used to provide semantic signals about what a webpage was about.
One of the most important research papers was Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment by Jon M. Kleinberg, published around 1998 (link to research paper at the end of the article). The main discovery of this research paper is that there is too many web pages and there was no objective way to filter search results for quality in order to rank web pages for a subjective idea of relevance.
The author of the research paper discovered that links could be used as an objective filter for authoritativeness.
Kleinberg wrote:
“To provide effective search methods under these conditions, one needs a way to filter, from among a huge collection of relevant pages, a small set of the most “authoritative” or ‘definitive’ ones.”
This is the most influential research paper on links because it kick-started more research on ways to use links beyond as an authority metric but as a subjective metric for relevance.
Objective is something factual. Subjective is something that’s closer to an opinion. The founders of Google discovered how to use the subjective opinions of the Internet as a relevance metric for what to rank in the search results.
What Larry Page and Sergey Brin discovered and shared in their research paper (The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine – link at end of this article) was that it was possible to harness the power of anchor text to determine the subjective opinion of relevance from actual humans. It was essentially crowdsourcing the opinions of millions of website expressed through the link structure between each webpage.
What Did Gary Illyes Say About Links In 2024?
At a recent search conference in Bulgaria, Google’s Gary Illyes made a comment about how Google doesn’t really need that many links and how Google has made links less important.
Patrick Stox tweeted about what he heard at the search conference:
” ‘We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.’ @methode #serpconf2024″
Google’s Gary Illyes tweeted a confirmation of that statement:
“I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that”
Why Links Matter Less
The initial state of anchor text when Google first used links for ranking purposes was absolutely non-spammy, which is why it was so useful. Hyperlinks were primarily used as a way to send traffic from one website to another website.
But by 2004 or 2005 Google was using statistical analysis to detect manipulated links, then around 2004 “powered-by” links in website footers stopped passing anchor text value, and by 2006 links close to the words “advertising” stopped passing link value, links from directories stopped passing ranking value and by 2012 Google deployed a massive link algorithm called Penguin that destroyed the rankings of likely millions of websites, many of which were using guest posting.
The link signal eventually became so bad that Google decided in 2019 to selectively use nofollow links for ranking purposes. Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that the change to nofollow was made because of the link signal.
Google Explicitly Confirms That Links Matter Less
In 2023 Google’s Gary Illyes shared at a PubCon Austin that links were not even in the top 3 of ranking factors. Then in March 2024, coinciding with the March 2024 Core Algorithm Update, Google updated their spam policies documentation to downplay the importance of links for ranking purposes.
The documentation previously said:
“Google uses links as an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.”
The update to the documentation that mentioned links was updated to remove the word important.
Links are not just listed as just another factor:
“Google uses links as a factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.”
At the beginning of April Google’s John Mueller advised that there are more useful SEO activities to engage on than links.
Mueller explained:
“There are more important things for websites nowadays, and over-focusing on links will often result in you wasting your time doing things that don’t make your website better overall”
Finally, Gary Illyes explicitly said that Google needs very few links to rank webpages and confirmed it.
I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024
Why Google Doesn’t Need Links
The reason why Google doesn’t need many links is likely because of the extent of AI and natural language undertanding that Google uses in their algorithms. Google must be highly confident in its algorithm to be able to explicitly say that they don’t need it.
Way back when Google implemented the nofollow into the algorithm there were many link builders who sold comment spam links who continued to lie that comment spam still worked. As someone who started link building at the very beginning of modern SEO (I was the moderator of the link building forum at the #1 SEO forum of that time), I can say with confidence that links have stopped playing much of a role in rankings beginning several years ago, which is why I stopped about five or six years ago.
Read the research papers
Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment – Jon M. Kleinberg (PDF)
The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
Featured Image by Shutterstock/RYO Alexandre
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