domain.com/_widgets/keywords

will the above format work?

[is300]

I have a domain with about 35,000+ pages.
For SEO purposes, I'm looking to convert my URL string structure from mydomain.com/bla/bla/keyword/bla/ to mydomain.com/keyword/widgets/

Because of the way our rewrite will have to occur, I have to use a special character before the KW in my string, so that leaves me with mydomain.com/_keyword/widgets/

Can anyone forsee any potential negative effects of doing this? I figure using the underscore is the best option, but it can be anything. Please advise. Thanks!

[jdMorgan]

GoogleGuy is on record as recommending a hyphen, so you might want to consider using example.com/keyword-widget/ or example.com/widget-keyword/.

As long as you've got a unique character, then you can use it to locate the part of the URL you want to manipulate using mod_rewrite. The hyphen is seen by Google as a space, so it does not cause keyword-widget to be seen as one word instead of two, as an underscore or other character would.

Plus, placing a hyphen between the words doesn't look as funny as a leading underscore, or cause people to make errors when transcribing links to paper, as [example.com...] might; The link underline can "cover up" an underscore, as shown, and make it look like a space.

Jim

[is300]

Would [example.com...] be a SE Friendly string?

[jdMorgan]

Yeah, but it's ugly. How about:

[example.com...]

You can parse the two keywords in mod_rewrite and/or your scripts by looking for "-".

Jim

[is300]

Hum, lets see. Pretend I have 25 car manufacture names (Honda, Ford, Acura, etc), followed by 10-30 Models for each. Based on my experience, I'm seeing that the format mydomain.com/honda/civic/ ranks better than the /honda-civic/ format. Or am I wrong here?

I don't think my technical team is setup to combine the honda and civic names like you recommended.
If you were in a position where you had to keep the model in a directory within the manufacturer, what would you say?

What if I did: mydomain.com/shop/Honda/Civic/?
Would that be just as effective as mydomain.com/Honda/Civic?

[jdMorgan]

Well, I'm just passing on what I've read around the board here, and trying to dig out the reason you need this leading underscore. Since you've added "shop" to the URL now, I'm thinking you need it to "flag" or identify which URLs you want to rewrite, and which you don't. For that purpose, "shop" or "car" would be pretty good, I think. (I'd prefer "cars", "models" or "makes" to "shop" or "buy", though that's not based on any experience in this market segment, just on "gut feel."

If you prefer the "shop/" to a hyphen, then go for it. I just thought the hyphen "read better." Either way, you should be able to easily extract the following/surrounding parts of the URL for rewriting, and it should also be easy to do the opposite conversion in your php files with preg_replace.

Jim