SEO Newbie Question

File naming for SEO

[watermark]

Hi all,

I have designed a site for my customer that sells products online, but the problem is that there are 20 products, and available in one of two colors (silver or gold). How should I name the html files for best SEO?

For example, I have the pages, "silver-product-1.html", "gold-product-1.html", "silver-product-2.html", etc.

Will naming these twenty files similarly hurt placement? Unfortunately, there are not alot of keywords to choose from.

Any help is appreciated

[treeline]

How about:
/silver/widget-1.html
/gold/widget-1.html
/gold/large-widget.html

I haven't found a problem with structures like story1.html, story2.html, story3.html. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

And: Welcome to Webmasterworld!

[danmccarthy]

or maybe:

/widget/silver-1.html
/widget/gold-1.html
/widget/large-gold-1.html

(just to avoid product pages spread across multiple directories...but maybe that's just me.)

[rj87uk]

/widget/silver-1.html
/widget/gold-1.html
/widget/large-gold-1.html

Why the -1 -2 -3 and so on?
Can you not just name the pages:

/widget/silver-ring.html
/widget/silver-earring.html
/widget/gold-ring.html
/widget/gold-earring.html

RJ.

[iblaine]

The filenames look fine to me. Using similar words shouldn't hurt. The dashes and numbers will show up as spaces. It's probably not a good idea to use directories for only 40 products. Filenames, while important, are just one of many factors so don't concentrate on them too much.

[watermark]

Thanks for the replies,

I guess I was being overly cautious. In fact it is jewelry she sells, and most of the products are earrings. So, basically I have silver-earring-1.html, silver-earring-2.html, silver-earring-3.html, and so on. Same with the gold earrings.

This wont effect placement?

Thanks again,

[willybfriendly]

I name files so that it makes sense to me. If it makes sense to me, it probably makes sense to my visitors. I'd be apt to use

earrings/silver-diamond.htm
earrings/silver-cross.htm
earrings/small-silver-loops.htm
earrings/med-silver-loops.htm
etc...

so if I needed to edit something (assuming no DB) I could go straight to it.

WBF

[ogletree]

First off file nameing is such a tiny part of SEO if any that just do whatever you like. Second nobody looks at file names except web designers.

[rj87uk]

remember ogletree every penny counts so to speak...

added:

Second nobody looks at file names except web designers.

I disagree, Have you ever saw someone trying to write down a URL because he or she doesnt know how to copy and paste? I know a lot of people dont know how to copy and paste, people who do use the internet!

RJ

[ogletree]

The problem with most SEO's is that they spend too much time worrying about pennys and not spending the right amount of time on $'s. There are too many big things that need to be done. People like to work on details and nit picky things and can spend months with no traffic. Work on the easy things that bring quick results first then worry about little things. I understand that page nameing can't be changed later but don't let something that small cripple you. My biggest pet peave is that people spend tons of time and effort trying to get some big word that they may or may not even get when they can get traffic instantly with smaller words. Get traffic first then work on the hard stuff.

[watermark]

Unfortunately, I need every penny I can on this job. She is after a super clean design, hardly any text, and a similar look to tiffany.com. I made her aware that without text content, it will be extremely difficult to get good placement, and she knows this, but again, I am trying to do anything I can to help out.

Thanks!

[picasso]

I think the names are quite important, i see in Google a increasing relavance of the filenames.

[Robert Charlton]

I name files so that it makes sense to me. If it makes sense to me, it probably makes sense to my visitors.

I think ogletree and willybfriendly have it nailed. I don't think that page names are that important for SEO, but it's important that they be functional. I try to be consistent and to think about how they'll sort when they're sorted alphabetically (for when I go to edit them).

[picasso]

Maybe it is a niche phenomena of the german google market, but my sites really get a additional boost when changed the filename in keyword.html . I tried it several times to eliminate other factors.