Page Naming for SEO and Usability

Years ago I had a manger that cared passionately about accessible URL’s. To this day I am not sure if he had OCD, a bad URL childhood experience or if he just hated to type. An amazon.com product URL could literally reduce this man to tears.

New Series: Small Changes and DIY Tweaks

He may have been a bit left of center but there was a kernel of wisdom in his obsession that can be used to improve usability and increase your search engine visibility.

Keeping it Short

Use directories to create short URL′s to navigational level pages especially those that you will want users to access from marketing collateral. Using a directory you can turn this http://yoursite.com/about.html into this http://yoursite.com/about.

This technique humanizes the URL, gives your more technology savvy users another navigational metaphor and gives you a nice short URL to use in on and off-line marketing collateral.

Google Loves Relevant Page Names

Everybody loves Google and Google is all about relevant search results. Lately I have been doing some research regarding keywords in page names and have found that it is a powerful technique. If you have doubts about the validity of this statement type some keywords into your favorite search engine and read the page names

Looking over my body of work I have been making all kids of mistakes in this area. This is what I have learned:

• Google likes short URLs under 100 characters if possible.
• Hyphens are the preferred method for indicating space.
• In page names one or two spaces are GOOD, four or more start to look like SPAM and ten or more could get you demoted.
• Keywords in the URL are ranked by position. First is best, second, third etc.
• Your page content must support page name and directory keyword usage.

(Source: vaughns-1-pagers.com)

As an example take a look at one of my pre-enlightenment URLs and the optimized version.

Original

www.thegreenloop.com/Loomstate_Justice_Jeans_p/ls-justicejeans.htm

Optimized

www.thegreenloop.com/denim/loomstate/justice-jean.html

The optimized URL is not only keyword rich it is also human readable.

Next time you grab File>Save As, stop and think about how you can add value for your users and your organic search engine traffic. The ROI on your time spent could be exponential.

About the “Small Changes” and “DIY Tweaks” series

The “Small Changes” and “DIY Tweaks” series are about getting you information you can use to improve your sites usability, search engine visibility and conversion rates with techniques that are simple to perform and testable.

NOTE: This series marks a change in my narrative voice. I started out writing about large changes however I found creating the content took to much time. I will still be doing the Robin Hood thing but it will not be the sole focus of this blog.