Search-engine Optimization for the whole URL path Hi. How can I format/structure all the URL of my pages in order to optimize the search engine ranking? I'm not too sure how to organize my pages and give them proper URL. Any clues? Thanks.
You could go with : Scanrio 1. http://www.domain.com/products_category/product_sub_family/product_name.html Scenario 2. http://www.domain.com/products_category/product_sub_family/product_name/
Make sure you use the hypen - rather than the underscore_. Google doesn't see the underscore as a space.
What're the difference between each two? Which is better, or are they just the same? And since I am organising a article base, so I wonder if it is good to do the following: - www. keyword-website/article-type(eg blog)/main-category(eg logic)/sub-category01/sub-category02/.../title You see, it is indeed very clumsy. Will search engine punish this type of URL?
Do you know if the following situations will get punished: - have more hyphens in the URL - have more keywords in URL Eg: www. word1-word2-word3-word4.com will be punished Any clues?
Here is an interesting experiment. Search google for the following 2 terms: home-work home_work (or any other two common terms) The results for the underscore show that google is looking for an exact match to the underscore. While for the hyphen, it does not seem to care. Here is another example: Search for: good-people All the results are seen for good people There might of course be multiple variables at play here, but it does seem like a hyphen is parsing the separate words better. Hope this was helpful.
Oh ok, it is very helpful. So what should i do with my Music Lyrics site in my sig. I have zillions of pages with _'s. Should I do a 301 redirect?
Btw MSN Search shows the exactly same results for both good-people and good_people. Y! Search shows similar ones (it understands both as good people)
When you type good-people, Google will look for 3 types of words: good-people good people (or less common) goodpeople This is what I collected: Search engines give a little weight to keywords found in domain names and URLs. Because URLs and domains do not allow spaces, one must use either underscores or hyphens as word separators (or not use any separators at all). Underscores is bad since Google does not treat underscores as word separators. That's why Google won't consider keyword1_keyword2 as matches to keyword1 and keyword2. Obviously, it is better to use hyphens in your URLs and domains.
It is what I collected: If you have already used underscores, don't change your page names to hyphens. The weight given to matches in URLs and domains is not significant enough to be worth the time of waiting that search engines need to recrawl and reindex the changed URLs. You should consider using hyphens for the sites and pages that you are going to make in the future.
I had investiagated whether to use hyphens or underscores while I was starting that site, 6 months ago. At that time all said that it doesn't matter, then i have go with underscore. If I had learned this that time i could go with that, but yes it is waste of time changing them to hypens and waiting all those bots to reindex my pages. Thanks for explanation.
I am very sorry for posting the initial paths with underscores Wai_Wai. What i intended to write is : Scanrio 1. domain.com/products-category/product-name.html Scenario 2. domain.com/products-category/product-name/ It's just UNIX, file writing habbit.
Using hyphens is helpful to boost your search engine ranking, but it is just a bit minor. I have done some searches with word1-word2 & word1_word2 in Yahoo & MSN. If there're diferences, it will be only 1-3 ranking changes. In future, remember to use your helpful "hyphen", or if you really hate hyphens, "plus (+)" is an alternative. Search engine still like them. When you search for (word1 word2): Google (so do MSN, Yahoo) like the following naming system: Plus (+): hxxp://www.domain.com/word1+word2.htm (fake URL) Hyphen (-): hxxp://www.domain.com/word1-word2.htm (fake URL)ï¬ Google (so do MSN, Yahoo) don't like the following naming system: No separator: hxxp://www.domain.com/word1word2.htm (fake URL) Underscore "_": hxxp://www.domain.com/word1_word2.htm (fake URL) Note: For Yahoo & MSN, although they treat "hyphens(-)" & "undescore(_)" as space, it seems hyphens & plus have slightly more weightings than underscore.
I re-ask the questions (hope anyone can answer it): 1) And since I am organising a article base, so I wonder if it is good to do the following: - www. keyword-rich-website/article-type(eg blog)/main-category(eg logic)/sub-category01/sub-category02/.../title You see, it is indeed very clumsy. Will search engine punish this type of URL? 2) Do you know if the following situations will get punished: - have more hyphens in the URL - have more keywords in URL Eg: word1-word2-word3-word4 will be punished Any clues?