When I only knew what I wanted to do, I bought some prepackaged software. Now that I know what I NEED to do, I'm finding that it falls short in some important areas. The software is .asp based, and my url for my dining guide for example comes up at domainname/Community/Browse.asp?cid=17 I know that domainname/Community/restaurants.htm would be a much better choice, but they want to charge me an additional $600 to make this feature available. So my question is, how much are those crappy url's going to hurt me? I'm trying to get into Google top 3 for durango colorado. Right now I'm working on content and backlinks from PR3+ sites. Will that be enough to put me over my competition, or do I need to spend the $600?
A keyword in the URL even inner pages will help a lot SEO wise. It depends on the magnitude of the website whether it's worth the $600 or not.
I'm not familiar with all the different kinds of web design software out there.... but, in my opinion, $600 sounds like waaay too much money to pay just to get the silly little question mark out of the URL. Isn't there anything cheaper (or free) that could do what you need without charging you so much extra? I only paid $50 for my web design software....and I thought that was a lot. Good luck to you!