Search Engine Friendly Web Addresses
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Don't Call your Files 'Silly' Names

Something that you might want to think about when creating your website is the choice of file names.

This is because the file names should ideally be reflecting what the file is about. So, if you have a web page about fly fishing rods then call it flyfishingrods.html for example. This makes a lot more sense to both humans and search engines when they're scanning your pages. So much better than page6.html for example.

Same thing with your images and other components of a web page.

Rather than calling a picture of a product you're selling pic6.jpg for example, call it what it actually is, like antique_penn_fly_fishing_reel.jpg or whatever. Remember, Google might be smart but it doesn't know what a picture is, it can only look at 'clues' such as tags and titles.

Now some of you will have dynamic websites because you'll have ecommerce shopping carts or forums and Content management systems and what not. This means that a particular web page might be called

http://www.yoursite.com/catalog/dept789/index.php?product=1234&cat=567

Which is completely useless for SEO purposes. If you can, get your designer to configure the software to make the website addresses contain the words of the product and categories such as :

http://www.yoursite.com/catalog/fishingreels/antique/penn234.php for example
so that the search engines can read the URL's better.

Even better still, you can use more advanced tips like mod_rewrite to tell the server to rename the files so that not only do they have the search phrases in the file names but the pages appear 'static' as well.
You can use this particular function for tidy page redirects as well - but let's keep it simple for now.

This means having pages ending in .html rather than .php or .asp or .cfm or whichever technology your site uses.

There are various schools of thought about all this but my take on it is that if it means people can read what the page is about from looking at it in the navigation or sitemap or even a search engine listing, then you'll get more people clicking on it, as well as any SEO benefits that it has.

The ultimate extension to all this is domain names. Google likes websites that say what they are.
Another good reason to have a microsite or two!

If you sell vintage bicyle parts then call your website www.vintagebikeparts.com or whatever the most appropriate search term is - rather than mikeknighttrading.com because it has no seo friendly aspect to the URL. (MKLINK should have been called internet marketing tips really - although I have 20 microsites)

Want more information? Checkout http://www.mklink.com/freetrial/

'till Next Time,
Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips