URL Naming

by Mike Banks Valentine

In regards to putting your keywords in the domain name, filenames
and dynamic path (via URL rewrite rules on database calls).

I suggest that you simply do some searches for your targeted keyword
phrases and look at the top ten or twenty results. The URL is
displayed by Google in green text and you can simply review what is
working for those top ranked sites. All industries are not the same
and what works for a less competitive keyword phrase will rarely
work as a single tactic for highly competitive phrases.

So don't spend a lot of time applying that single tactic because
your keyword searches show all the top ranking sites doing that one
thing. While you are at the top sites you have to look at whether
they use all the other ingredients to effective SEO.

The really critical thing to focus on was how Chris Oberst asked the
question:

How important is it to have the product name or description
in the URL? Is it important, borderline, or not important?

Chris is obviously aware that there is a range of possibility. Among
the choices offered, the answer would have to be "borderline"
because the assumption is made by many that there is a single
technique that will catapult sites to the top ten. That is simply
not true and in most cases, concentrating on single techniques to
the exclusion of all others is at best ineffective, and at worst
considered spam.

The word I like to use instead of "borderline", is "incrementally
important." Yes it can have a positive effect on ranking to include
your keywords in the URL. But if you don't include those same
keywords in your title tags, description tags, alt text, headline,
body text and text hyperlinks - you are just diddling with
ingredients instead of cooking a meal.

If you don't have worthwhile *internal links* connecting important
related pages, you have forgotten to turn on the oven. If you don't
cook each page individually and instead apply the same recipe to
every meal (page), you are eating the same dish every meal. If you
don't have inbound links from external sites, you'll be eating alone.

Variety is the spice of life. Don't get stuck at the fast food
joints (single tactic SEO) unless you want to spend all your money
on happy meals (Pay-Per-Click).