SEO Tycoon

**lamordnt** · 10-02-2009, 08:52 PM

I have a question based on naming files for the purpose of SEO. I have heard alot about putting keywords in the file name to help your SEO rankings for that page but am starting to wonder if it is worth it. For example if you had a fence company that sold chain link in Oakland you would name your chain link fence file something like this: www.fenceco.com/chain-link-fence-oakland.html with the file name "chain-link-fence-oakland.html".

Does this work? Do search engines pay attention to this or should you just give your files a more simple name?

I also am wondering if there is a certain file structure that google likes to see so that you can get separate page listings that show up under your main link in the search results. Like when you google "apple" and below
the main link it shows links for "store, downloads, iphone, etc..."

Ultimately I am just curious as to what methods people take when it comes to naming files.

Thanks!

**webwest** · 10-02-2009, 09:36 PM

"chain-link-fence-oakland.html" certainly means more to me (and Google) than index.php?page=1&code=xyz ...

**lamordnt** · 10-07-2009, 01:03 AM

Not sure if anyone else was following this but I found a great article answering my question on SEO Moz. Here is the link:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls

**mrandrei** · 10-08-2009, 02:43 AM

Files or domain extensions don't have any real SEO benefits. Google doesn't favor specific file names. It really boils down to quality linkbuilding.

**stanleyj** · 11-17-2009, 03:00 PM

Thank for sharing that link,yeah keyword in url is one of the key element for seo.

**watchitmister** · 11-18-2009, 06:24 PM

i think it does have effect on google. I always name files with keywords that i want to rank high for.

**chrishirst** · 11-18-2009, 06:39 PM

It has no effect at all with Google, it does however have some mall effect with Yahoo!

The effect at Google is if a link is made to the page using the URI as anchor text, however be careful

**watchitmister** · 11-19-2009, 04:21 PM

No offense Chris, but where do you get your info? Do you know the answers behind google? lol

I have always had success with putting keywords in my title. I definitely do it alot with articles I write and usually rank pretty high right from the start.

**chrishirst** · 11-19-2009, 04:23 PM

And what has the title got to do with file names??

**watchitmister** · 11-19-2009, 04:24 PM

oh sorry, i meant in the URL.

**chrishirst** · 11-19-2009, 04:38 PM

and was this the ONLY place the "keywords" appeared?

**watchitmister** · 11-19-2009, 04:51 PM

well of course not...but i would have to imagine that it would carry some weight in google. I think the url's may help reenforce the keywords. I believe there are other things that have alot more weight than just the file name such as backlinks but I do believe they carry a little weight.

**watchitmister** · 11-19-2009, 04:55 PM

And I am not just talking about the benefit it gets like in the forum post you mentioned above

**chrishirst** · 11-19-2009, 05:15 PM

So you only ASSUME or think that "key word" file names "help". I have tested this, by isolating a word ONLY to the filename. The same word did not appear on any pages on the same site, it did not appear in the body copy, it did NOT appear in the page title, it was NOT used for anchor text to the page.

This particular page was crawled andindexed many times by ALL search engines, the only one it appeared in was Yahoo!
Now I trust my own testing rather than some "experts" idea of what it is "important"!

**watchitmister** · 11-19-2009, 06:08 PM

you are saying for instance that if bigredballoons.com and smallbluepeanuts.com had the exact same content and exact same back links and titles and everything...that if i googled big red balloons that small blue peanuts would rank the same

I am not saying im an expert...I just think it has some effect on it.

I will have to conduct an experiment as well. =)

**chrishirst** · 11-19-2009, 06:16 PM

nope, because bigredballons does NOT equal "big red balloons"

and if you had links to bigredballons.com with the anchor text of "small blue peanuts" it would not appear "big red ballons" either.

**learning is key** · 11-19-2009, 07:06 PM

hi all, what if you want to use a sub file name to target a keyword in url that would help wouldn't it or am i off base with naming files

**watchitmister** · 11-19-2009, 07:18 PM

eh im not going to keep going with it lol...

but can you take a look at something...

Search for "tips for taking surveys"
there are almost 700,000 results in the search engine...

An article that i just wrote a few weeks ago is ranked #3. The URL contains the keywords. In matter of fact, i didnt even separate using a dash.

I know I dont have many backlinks to the website. I do have a few from forums and maybe a few others.

But you are saying the results are purely a result of content on that webpage including the title?

**chrishirst** · 11-19-2009, 07:45 PM

Ok, so the phrase has ONLY 367 competing pages. You have the phrase in the title and THAT demonstrates the "URI" is the factor that makes it "rank"??

**watchitmister** · 11-19-2009, 08:13 PM

just curious where did you recieve the competing pages number from?