I know Matt Cutt's said something on twitter a little bit back about your URL either not affecting SEO or maybe even harming it. I can't seem to find this anywhere anymore, is anyone sure if it does have an affect? Either negative or positive? I can't see it being possible that it actually hurts you.
I believe Matt Cutts was referring to URLs that use long and obviously spammy URLs that are simply there to target the keyword, that those could possibly harm a website or at least not be taken into account when raking the site. This is more true for domain names than page filenames. Wordpress almost always has long, page filenames. That said, I don't believe having a keyword in your URL is generally going to hurt your rankings, especially if the keyword used in the URL is something simple and short. For example, a spammy URL might be something like Seo–for–marketing–in–automotive–niche.com but if you just had something like AutomotiveMarketing.com that would not be a problem.
I have never heard about that it might hurt you having your keyword in the url. I think its the opposite. An actually I have only heared about that it always helps. Even Matt cutts said that one itme.
Yes putting keyword in URL's is ultra bad for SEO * you should just write nonsense like item-1-category-six-12345 to make it real hard for Googlebot to work out what the freaking nora a page is about never write clear URL's like example Google URL Green-dress & the worse thing you can do is put "size-10-green-dress" in a URL as that will seem ultra spammy and might look like you are targeting size 10 green dresses now once you make sure you don't do that, whatever you do don't get marked as spam by using real long descriptive URL's like "size-10-green-dress-silk" or "size-10-green-dress-satin-look" or Google will for sure never know what the heck your page is about. Or you could jut think it's URL's I asked about not domains I don't get the answers these people are giving me and put it down to c'est la vie... * I am kidding btw
The thing is your urls should look natural this is the main thing here, neither all the urls should be short nor long... you can also follow about.com how it formats url.. how it provides content and how it is called authority site.
Revelations-Decoder had me going for a sec. I was like, "WTH is he saying?" But when I say the "green-dress" reference, I knew he was BS'ing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using "money keywords" in a URL if the page associated with that URL is targeting a "money keyword". As someone else said, as long as the URL does not seem spammy, you should be fine.