Q and A: How important are keywords within URLs for SEO purposes?

Dear Kalena...

I´m working in url rewrite for my website. I have a few questions or problems I'd like to solve, just wondering if you could help me: in my new url´s how important are keywords for SEO? Which directories inside the url are more important? How should I separate keywords for better results?

I hope you can help me, any commentary will surely be of help.

Thanks!
Santiago


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Santiago

Wow that's a lot of questions. Might need a coffee to cope with those. Let's see:

1) All things being equal, I do think that using keywords within your file names (and visible URLs) helps your search relevancy and usability a little. Particularly if you have a large catalog of products and you can sort them into logical file-names. But it will only ever help a little and certainly not if you go overboard and throw in every possible keyword combination for the sake of it. For example:

This is logical:

site.com/blue-suede-shoes.htm

But this is not:

site.com/we-sell-blue-suede-shoes-that-will-make-you-look-like-elvis.htm

Consider your site usability and link potential. How many people would want to link to or type in such a long page name? Also note the difference between using keywords in your file-names vs keywords in your domains - the latter is ugly as well as pointless for SEO. It may also attract the wrong sort of attention from Google according to their head of Webspam Matt Cutts.

2) In terms of directories, I'm assuming you mean directory levels of your URLs? From what I understand, the closer your content resides to your top level domain, the more important search engines consider it to be for indexing purposes. Content buried many sub-directories deep like site.com/catalog/shoes/suede/blue.htm may not ever get indexed, so be sure to use a logical directory structure that is no more than 1 or 2 levels deep. The alternative is to use Google's SiteMaps tool instructing Googlebot how to index all your sub-directories and pages.

3) Ah, the old hyphens vs underscores debate. I'll let Jill Whalen wax lyrical on that one. Matt Cutts also throws in his 2 cents worth about the issue here. In short, hyphens (dashes) are the way to go.

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