Starting From Search

Searching for Truth: Placing Keywords in a Page URL

Does it help overall search rankings to use keyword in a site or page URL? For example, if a company makes blue widgets, is it helpful to have a page with the URL of yoursite.com/blue_widgets?

The answer is not a simple yes or no. File names are used in matching search queries, but not as much as the page title and quality page content.

Using the example above, if a company makes blue widgets, having a listing on the site at yoursite.com/blue_widgets/ is a good idea for a few reasons.

From a usability perspective it makes the URL easy to remember for customers, especially when the trigger action is delayed - such as when the URL is seen in a brochure, banner ad or TV commercial.

But can it help in search rankings? It can, but it's devalued in terms of effectiveness. This value has been devalued over time because of keyword stuffing. I've seen some comical versions of this all over the web - file names stuffed with keywords and many hyphens. That is ineffective and the risk of a search engine ban is high.

Here is a real life example, with the main site domain removed to erase any potential link endorsement:

www.[This-Part-Removed].com/paintball-gun-scopes-paintball-gun-scopes-jungle-paintball-jungle-paintball/

Gee, I wonder what words they want to rank well for.

Direct, easy URLs to the products you make are a good idea, though search ranking considerations should be a minor factor. Doing so can help a little, but don't be in any rush to rename files to match keywords.

Extra explainer: In my example above, notice the words are separated by an underscore: yoursite.com/blue_widgets. Doing so will ensure a search engine will regard it as two distinct words, not a single, hyphenated word.

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This post is part of a multi-series column called, Searching for Truth, designed to shed light on the latest trends, myths and misconceptions in search marketing. Links to other columns in this series:

February 22, 2006 - Searching for Truth: Placing Keywords in a Page URL

September 19, 2005 - Searching for Truth: Mining Site Stats

August 4, 2005 - Searching for Truth: Site Resubmissions

Searching for Truth: Mining Site Stats

What are your site stats really telling you?

Web stats packages such as Webtrends and Urchin can tell site owners how visitors are interacting with a site. It’s certainly a valuable tool overall, but more and more I see webmasters and marketing directors looking at site stats for insights into search marketing. In one case, the insight they are seeking is a misguided one.

Top Keyword Referrer
Site stat packages offer a listing of the top ten keyword referrers. It's not uncommon for a site owner to tell me that they know what keywords are working – they have the top keyword referrers from their site stats. But this is not the list you may think it is.

This will tell you what keywords you are ranking well for now, but it doesn't tell you what keywords you actually need to rank well for to fully utilize your potential. And if any more than 4 or 5 of those keywords are variations of your company name, your search optimization is failing you.

Only quality keyword research can uncover which keywords and keyword phrases are being used in your market space, and thusly, which keywords need to be optimized for on a site.

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This post is part of a multi-series column called, Searching for Truth, designed to shed light on the latest trends, myths and misconceptions in search marketing. Links to other columns in this series:

February 22, 2006 - Searching for Truth: Placing Keywords in a Page URL
September 19, 2005 - Searching for Truth: Mining Site Stats
August 4, 2005 - Searching for Truth: Site Resubmissions

Searching for Truth: Site Resubmissions

Search is a valuable investment of time and money for many reasons I have covered in various posts here. As with any growing and changing industry, some out-dated practices continue to be used. I thought I would start a series of articles around such items and in today’s post I would like to talk about site resubmission.

Resubmitting a Site to Search Engines
This old practice sometimes pops back up in odd places, mostly by clients that ask me off-the-cuff, "Oh, and how often should we resubmit our site?" This time it popped up in a most unexpected place. I learned that a large SEO company was still guiding their clients to resubmit their sites. This is something they even listed on their web site. I was really surprised to see this company still suggesting this practice since site resubmission is a waste of time and money, and brings no benefit to rankings.

Site resubmission was a technique that was done in the past (pre-2000) but has fallen out of favor by search experts and the engines themselves. Search marketers would resubmit sites every month or when a site went through a major update.

Today’s landscape is much different. Once a site is submitted to a search engine the first time, it never needs to be submitted again. Once you are in the engine’s database there is no reason to ask to be included in the database again, which is what you are doing if you resubmit. It’s like calling the phone company to list a phone number that is already listed in the phone book.

Many engines will even find your site without a submission. Spiders follow links around the web and if a site that is already in an engine’s database links to your site, your site will be crawled.

The view that resubmitting your site will get you indexed more often is a fallacy, too. The way to keep spiders coming back is to keep updating your site with appropriate content and getting quality sites to link to you.

How does this affect my rankings? It doesn't. It’ll just be a waste of time.
Resubmission won’t affect your site rankings. Mostly, it’s just a waste of time (or money if you are paying for the service). There have been whispers in the past that sites that are resubmitted too often could be penalized, but I find this highly suspect. The reason is simple: someone could constantly resubmit a competitor’s site until the site was penalized. Certainly a dirty practice that would be greatly frowned upon, but that is the key reason why resubmissions are simply ignored.

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This post is part of a multi-series column called, Searching for Truth, designed to shed light on the latest trends, myths and misconceptions in search marketing. Links to other columns in this series:

February 22, 2006 - Searching for Truth: Placing Keywords in a Page URL

September 19, 2005 - Searching for Truth: Mining Site Stats
August 4, 2005 - Searching for Truth: Site Resubmissions