Keywords in URLs
There has always been debate over what level of relevance keywords in URLs have towards gaining both better ranking in search engines as well as helping to improve click-through rates from users.
It can be difficult to get the mix right for some sites, particularly the sites that are e-commerce related and have massive product portfolios.
Generally it is accepted that keywords in URLs is a good thing, it’s just a question of how good and how far do you go?
Matt Cutts (Google WebSpam team lead) has said in video’s that there shouldn’t be long strings of keywords in URLs as Google will see that as looking a bit spammy (he used seven keywords in a URL string all separated by hyphens as an example) however where is the right mix?
It may be that the best option is to have just a couple of highly relevant keywords in the URL that are targeted specifically to the page that people are visiting.
A good example here would be…
on a shoe product page, rather than using a URL like this;
http://www.shoestore.com/?product=456
You might use one like this without the variable in the domain and a static keyword that’s relevant to the product;
http://www.shoestore.com/blue-shoes-456/
This allows search engines an extra indicator of what’s on the page that is referenced by the keywords in the URLs as well has helping the user see exactly what the page is relevant to based on the URL structure prior to clicking through.
In the above example you still maintain the product code (the “456″) so that your own system has an identifier of the product however the URL is a lot more search engine friendly as well as being more user friendly.
keyword content, technical information