Hi Everyone,
I am new to your forum, what a great site.

I have a few questions I could use help with. (I am a new webmaster)
My index page is www.mightygrip.ca I have only had my site up and running for about 2 months and am wondering if I should make the following changes. (although I am afraid to loose my current position in Google, which I consider to be pretty good considering) I have checked my page rank with SEO-guy’s tool and as expected am 0 /10

I have noticed (or may be its coincidence) that many pages in top 10 have keywords in the url.
Example: search for “Mighty grip”
Highly ranked pages are often

www.mightygrip.com/mighty-grip.html
www.squashdesignusa.com/mightygrip.html
www.mypage/mighty-grip.html

With that in mind here is my plan

1 change my index page to be less focused on “Mighty Grip” the product and more focused on my company “Canadian Sports Wholesale”.
I will keep some of the content Re: Mighty Grip, and other products on my index page, but greatly reduced.


2 Because my main page must be named index, I can’t name it mighty-grip so I want to create a new page named mighty-grip.html in which, I would focus on Mighty Grip.
(My hope is that google will re-index this new mighty-grip.html and place it higher than it is now)

3 Change the current name of my page for batting gloves (mg-gloves.html) to
batting-gloves.html

While I am changing page names and my site, I figured I would change some others to include the words mighty grip in the url as well.
Will this help my position?

Is it dangerous or bad to change URL’s of pages?
Could it cause problems with Google listings?

Am I making a mistake in doing this?
Is there a better way to improve my ranking for free?
(Other than good links)
I would appreciate any advice or constructive criticism.

Thank you
Scott

Maybe I should break this down in to a few smaller questions.
Any advise or input would be appreciated.

Does having a keyword in your url help your positioning in google?
Ie: if the word batting glove is in url will I do better in a search for batting glove?
or does it make no difference?



Will changing the url of a page cause me to loose position?

Not meaning to spam with the same questions, but I am hoping to make these changes before my sight is crawled again.

Thanks

Scott

I always put keywords in my urls. I think it helps. Keywords in title, tag and url.

Hey, I'm a web designer... I think you may need some help? I'd be more than happy to service you. <SNIP>

Thanks Candy,
I thought it might help.


Thanks as well 170 Designs
I do need help, but have a whole new web ready to post, and am on a very limited budget $0.00 LOL
I will look at your service and possibly contact you in the future.

My next question is, will changing my urls, affect my position?

Thanks for the help, it is appreciated immensly
Scott

I don't think anyone can give you a definite yes or no answer since serps are based on a number of factors and now I see more about being "penalized" even if slightly for "over-optimized" pages.

Whether or not your pages does will can be affected by some of the following
a) a good descriptive page title (which should be brief but contain keywords)
b) good page content using the keywords you want to target for that page or product
c) inbound links... good quality links from other sites with similar themes/content (not just reciprocal links on non-related sites which can give you a little boost but not as much as a solid link from a related site)
d) money :-) Pay-per-click is the only GUARANTEED way to get a high rank.

To minimize the effects of renaming a page, use a redirect from the old page. It's preferred to do this at server level via .htaccess (lots of info here and by searching google) or from the old webpage. Try to avoid the 0 second redirects, some SE's see them as spamming (the big G at one time, not sure about now).

Deb

Yes, you will most likely drop back PR on secondary pages creating new URLs along with changing focus on page. It sounds like the site is still new enough to seriously consider making the changes you describe. In your shoes, I would most likely do the same.

The URL changes can have more impact in Yahoo! rather than Google but, may have some in Google as well. As noted earlier in this thread, don't forget the on page tags as well as Inbound Links (within your site as well as external) having the keyword phrases specifically pointing to each page of note.

Sounds like you have a plan!

Thanks Michael,
Sounds like its worth my while to do it now.
I will make the changes today.
Thanks for the advice

Thanks to you also Deb,
Sorry, I got distracted and meant to thank you before.
Redirect is a great idea, I will check further into this.
When you say 0 second, do you mean that literally, as in it redirects in 0 sec.?
In other words, I am better to delay the redirect by a few seconds and maybe a brief explanation as to why on redirect page?

Ie: Our web has been recently modified, you are being redirected to the new page. Thank you for visiting Canadian Sports Wholesale

Thank you all again.


Scott

To the mods, sorry I double posted, instead of editing.
I will learn, I promise

Sorry I double posted,
I will learn.
Scott