Does the name of the html count

Does it help?

[ibpotter]

Might not be af Google Forum Q - but this is where I spend my time ;-)

The tittle matters to Google but how about the naming of the actual html file? Because I have a great deal of pages I gave them numbers - seemed to be the right thind to do at the time. The Q is - will it help my ranking including keywords when creating new pages?

Ig so - what would be best if I was to "rename" my pages? Leave the old ones and create new or renaming the old ones?

By the way - I just love this place. I have been coming here the last 5 months and have great succes thanks to all the threads here. Beets the few Danish sites on the matter.

Thanks.

[instand1]

TITLE and Link-text (anchor-text) matter most. If the name of the page plays a role it is a very minor one.

[ncw164x]

It will be a easier to maintain your site if your pages are called by a name rather than page1.html page2.html etc

[ibpotter]

Yes, ncw164x, U are right - and that is why I chose numbers - to keep an overview. I am okay with my naming convention for the moment - just, if it meant somthind I would change it. Just wondering - might try it out to se if it matters....

[ncw164x]

IMHO yes it does matter
You would find it an advantage if you say your site sold 3 different coloured widgets you would name your pages

blue_widgets.html
red_widgets.html
green_widgets.html

(personal choice if you use hyphen or underscore inbetween the keywords)

Having text on your pages relating to each of the colours, your keywords title and description all relating to each colour and you would find this an advantage instead of having page1.html page2.html which mean absolutly nothing because a visitor to a search engine will not type in a search box "page 1"

but he will type in "blue widgets"

[PaulPaul]

Through my testing, I have seen no evidence of any seo advantage when naming the html: keyword.html

[edited by: PaulPaul at 10:15 pm (utc) on Mar. 2, 2003]

[ncw164x]

Through my experience I do not see the point of having a site with say 200 pages called page1.html to page200.html, thats the point I am trying to make

[andreasfriedrich]

>>Might not be af Google Forum Q - but this is
>>where I spend my time ;-)

Strange attitude.

[heini]

Two points:
It helps organizing files, recognizing them instantly. So for selforganizational reasons I fnd this a valuable help.
Second I think it has some (very little actually) influence. I won't get into the nitty gritty here, and I'm sure some people will strongly disagree. Anyhow, if it's a nice way to organize files and it at least doesn't hurt in SEs - then I see no reason not to use it anyway.

[ncw164x]

>>Might not be af Google Forum Q - but this is
>>where I spend my time ;-)

Sorry andreasfriedrich but I dont understand your comment
Strange attitude.?

[ncw164x]

heini

that's all I was trying to point out to ibpotter, not to get into a debate on the in's and outs or the rights and wrongs of how you construct you directory/file system for your web site

[deejay]

I believe it may have a very minor effect within the algo.

But here's a thought... what effect might it have on your clickthrough rate?

I always check the URL before I click on a site in the SERPs, and am much more likely to click on a relevant looking URL.

It's a behaviour that I've also noticed in user testing.. both with novices and experienced users.

The domain name can often give a good indication whether the site is actually about what you want, and the file name is part of that, particularly for sites dealing with more than one subject.

[PaulPaul]

For clarification on previous comment, please take a look at my edit. [webmasterworld.com]

[heini]

Very good point deejay. I think it's fair to say talking domain paths are better for humans. Since advanced algos aim at imitating human visitors preferences from a rather abstract point of view it just makes sense to use talking file names.

[ibpotter]

Thanks for the feedback.

And andreasfriedrich, would you and your senior buddies please cosider this: considering the few Danish sites offering this kind of information, this forum will be visited by Danes. Being Danish, English is not our first language. That is why I opened my thread the way I did - being humble hoping not to encounter your reaction. Believe it or not, I was trying to do right by you and your fellow friends.

Your reaction was not what I was hoping for.

Thanks to the rest.

[instand1]

Thank you, deejay. I had only the algo in mind, but you are right: A good name of a page tells already something about the page. And a page named www.mysite.com/115.html may even look like spam: the 115th variation of the same stuff.
ibpotter: You asked a good question and got good answers fast. Don't get irritated by those answers that may not look like being helpful at first glance. There are more people around here with limited language skills in English, so never mind.

[ibpotter]

You are right - by gones... thanks, guess I know what to do the next couple of days....

How would you say would be best? Renaming my pages, now thay are indexed by several searchengines, my not be great. Duplicating them and then renaming them? Will that cause problems?

I wil sertanly take it in to account in the future - any suggestions?

Thanks..

[andreasfriedrich]

Please check your sticky mail ibpotter. I´m sincerely sorry if I offended you.

Andreas

[ncw164x]

ibpotter
4 years ago I had a site with 9 pages and each page was a number, it was as you say right at the time. For the long term approach you should in my opinion rename these pages to a name which relate to the content on each page and over a period of time delete the pages which are numbers. This will cause the spiders to put a 404 error in your log file but it's better to have this now than wait up to 6 months for these numbered pages to get filtered out of the search engine database but you will find long term it is the best option. There are mixed comments to calling the file by a keyword

I would also like to add that I have been visiting this excellent forum for 3 years and have only just started to post because of the Fear of being made to look small by posting a comments which is not quite correct. No one is perfect and anyone and everyone is allowed to make a mistake if it be a spelling mistake or by posting the wrong information

We all know that there are some very clever people involved with this forum and no one would take that away from them, but even these super humans started off knowing nothing about SEO

[daamsie]

ibpotter,

I may be wrong, but I think it can make a large difference. . There is a good chance that links to those pages will be structured like so: www.site.com/widgets.html - If you didn't have the word 'widgets' in that text, then you would be missing out on that potential anchor text. In situations where you can't control how people link to your pages, I think it is a worthwhile thing to do.

NOTE: My understanding is that the / and . will help seperate that word from the phrase - someone more knowledgeable than myself please correct me if I am wrong.

[apollo]

As deejay has mentioned, don't forget there is an element of human psychology when it comes to selecting a link from the google display.

If a person searches for 'blue widgets' and the google return shows the following URLs for numbers 3 and 4 -

3 - www.mydomain.com/376.htm

4 - www.mydomain.com/blue-widgets.htm

then it would be highly likely that the user will select 4 ahead of 3, all other things being equal.

[pageoneresults]

ibpotter, I'm an avid supporter of utilizing a keyword phrase naming structure. I've been doing it since 1996 and feel that when you add it in with all the other areas it may make a difference.

If file naming had very little relevance, why does Yahoo! bold those words from a search query? There are other SE's that also do this. I think it would be to your advantage to name the files accordingly. If the page is about aqua widgets, then name it aqua-widgets.htm.

[ibpotter]

Thank you all - and point taken. I am going to change my old file names over time and use a better naming convention for the future pages.

[gethan]

I would avoid naming pages with too much detail. I think there is a cut off at the number of characters within a file name that google (et al) will index (or assign rank to).

Eg.

blue-widgets.html - good

blue-furry-widgets-with-white-zig-zagged-stripes.html - bad

Anyone back me up on this with more detail? a number would help. (I have observed 0 pr's on some of my longer filenames - but have some other factors that are really confusing the issues).

[coconutz]

(personal choice if you use hyphen or underscore inbetween the keywords)

I would use a hyphen.

Hyphen or Underscore? [webmasterworld.com] see message #8 and #12.

[ncw164x]

Does not make any difference, I use hyphen and underscore both get spidered by googlebot and receive lots of page views, bottom line is as always "Content"

gethan
I have pages with wording as you would type in a search phrase with underscore beween each word and these pages are spidered and also viewed on a daily basis. OK they are not PR 6's and 7's but they were done to prove a point

[iftcoach]

@gethan (and of course the other):

blue-widgets.html - good
blue-furry-widgets-with-white-zig-zagged-stripes.html - bad

What do you think about
blue-furry-widgets/with-white-zig-zagged-stripes.html

I got the same "problem". Currently my url is like that:

dive_centre/35-indonesia/17-bali/99-bali_divers.htm
............^^ - id of country
.........................^^ id of island / region
.................................^^ id - of dive centre

and mod_rewrite is doing the rest!

I think diver are looking for 'dive centre indonesia' or 'diving centre bali' - so imho is a good choice.

But as deeper the directory as smaller the PR of this page.

So isn't it better with

dive_centre_35-indonesia_17-bali_99-bali_divers.htm

?

Maik

[gethan]

Maik, thats almost exactly the same scenario I have.

Basically the issues complicating it are:

1) Directory depth
- google uses the -1 to each level to estimate PR, not to assign real values so

2) Internal linking structure (also external links but ignored for this arguement)
- actually gives the PR. So a small number of links on the front page would pass on a greater percentage of the available PR to each linked page than a huge number but...

3) Url length
- google has a cut off on the length of a query string eg. dynamic.php?parameter1=12343&parameter2=34333&parameter3=43d45d
- why would static pages not have a similar cut off?

The chances are if you have to go with pages with names that long or that deep, then we're talking about a large number of pages and some kind of CMS (content management system) - in our case working with mod_rewrite.

I don't think that having a page in subdirectories as opposed to long filenames would make any difference. For organising data though and user experience I would go with sub dirs.

Finally case study - WebmasterWorld - keeps URL's nice and short,
eg. /forum17/1393.htm

Brett has steered clear of making titles also appear in the url. I guess that is because there is very little control over what users can select for a title and the processing of it isn't worth the tiny advantage that it confers.

[Craig_F]

I wouldn't bother. Your time can be better spent elsewhere on your site.

any benefit is minor. if you just can't resist, do just your main pages and see how it goes.

[jamesa]

If you do rename the files then, yes, redirect the old pages to the new ones. You don't want the spiders getting a bunch of 404 pages.

Another advantage of the keyword in the filename or url is inbound link text - some pages will link to you using the url as the link text. Minor, but another added plus.