Keywords in URL’s?

Does having keywords in a URL or page name improve your search engine position?

Keywords, keywords, keywords…finding an optimum balance between targeting the keywords you need to appear on Page 1 for and not looking like you are trying too hard to site visitors is a constant challenge…too many repetitions just ends up looking weird and you risk turning off visitors, increasing your “bounce” rate and reducing conversions of visits into dollars.

So where can you get a little extra keyword lift?

Firstly, try to secure a domain name with at least one of your “mega” keywords…it’s no coincidence that our blog URL is www.seoworks.com and that our main website is www.searchengineoptimisationworks.com.au …as you can see, both contain high volume critical keywords “SEO” and “search engine optimisation”…and we rank pretty well for these terms.

If you are in the hobbies business, for instance, then www.acmehobbies.com may give you that extra edge that www.acme.com would not…and if you are a hotel, try www.mayfairlondonhotel.co.uk rather than just www.themayfair.co.uk as you will indeed get some extra keyword mileage for the terms “London” and “hotel”.

So, should I change my URL?

Unless you are starting off from scratch, we don’t recommend changing a URL just so you can have some extra keyword leverage…having your keyword in you domain name is not so all-powerful that you should dump all your accumulated history and authority that you have developed over time. However, if you are planning a wholesale change to your online presence, it is worth considering.

Another option is to use a few keywords in your file names. Rather than name a sub directory /directory1/ try naming it with the keywords you are targeting with the pages within the directory such as /hotel-rooms/ or /teddy-bears/…and note the use of hyphens – these act as word separators whereas teddybears or teddy_bears look like big, unintelligible words to the Search Engines.

Apply the same approach to actual page names…for example /superior-hotel-rooms.html or /brown-teddy-bears.html …two or three keywords (the ones you are targeting with these pages) is plenty…don’t go nuts. You need to keep a level of reasonableness, not only for the Search Engines, but also for visitors…remember, if a page looks like web spam, smells like web spam and feels like web spam…then it probably is web spam and simply won’t engage with visitors. A couple of keywords in your file naming looks reasonable…more than five is too many.

And here’s a hint…

Google’s Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team posted this video…

…where he mentions that keywords in the URL do indeed help.

Sensibly he goes on to say that web masters and SEO’s shouldn’t obsess over this, but should approach the subject of keywords in URL’s in context with the overall Google SEO elements required to improve your Search Engine results…technical structure, keyword rich relevant content and quality, focused links.

Yahoo submitted a patent claim by the name “Techniques for Tokenising URLs” that was been made available in March 2009. The patent submission contains information about how a Search Engine may examine keywords from the URLs of pages. Yahoo’s patent shows in detail how keywords can be extracted from URLs. That’s a strong indicator that Yahoo also considers the keywords that appear in URLs.

What does this mean for your website?

A Search Engine considers a wide range of on-page and off-page web elements to figure out what a page is about. The majority of keyword relevance is taken from the content of a web page but, in highly competitive segments, a Search Engine will also take into consideration the URL and file name of a web page to determine keyword relevance.

If you want to get the best possible rankings for your website, particularly for highly competitive keyword phrases, it can indeed help to include your targeted keywords in the URLs of your website.

But remember, as with everything in the SEO world, it is important not to overdo this so that Search Engines don’t get the impression that you are web spamming.

So, in summary?

Keywords in the URLs and file names of your web pages can indeed improve the ranking of your web pages in Google’s search results.

---

SEO Works is a specialist SEO company offering SEO services across Australia and around the world. Explore our SEO Packages or ask an SEO expert to assist you with your SEO marketing, web SEO or Google SEO needs.

Technorati Tags: Google SEO, keywords, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO