Does URL construction play a part in SEO?

[obsos]

I am looking for your comments on how the URL construction or file naming plays a part in achieving better rankings.

eg ... is it better to name your file/folders
/getting_to_london/self_drive_tours.htm
or
/gettingtolondon/selfdrivetours.htm

I'm thinking along the lines of someone performing a search for "self drive tours in london". Would a URL constructed with underscores perform better than the URL without?

TIA
Robyn

[jdMorgan]

If I wanted to squeeze every last drop of advantage out of it, I'd use /london/self-drive-tours, dropping any unnecessary words, using a hyphen as a separator (it's treated like a space, unlike underscore), and eliminating the filetype (let server-side code add it back for internal use).

Also, be sure to compare traffic levels and conversions for "tour" versus "tours" - there's often a difference.

Jim

[pageoneresults]

If I wanted to squeeze every last drop of advantage out of it, I'd use /london/self-drive-tours

I'll confirm jdMorgan's suggestion and take it one step further...

/london/tours/

The only time I would use hyphens in the file names is if the keyword phrase is a primary one. If self and drive are keywords that visitors are using to find this type of service/product, then yes, having them within the URI string is of benefit. Not only from an SE perspective, but also from a usability and maintenance standpoint.

Think architecture when developing your URI structure. Think of it like... There's a place for everything and everything in its place. Use sub-directories to your advantage. When I open a site that I've built and/or manage, there is typically only one page in the root and that is the home page. Everything else is categorized under the root within a sub-directory. An example would be...

www.example.com/
www.example.com/tours/
www.example.com/tours/london/
www.example.com/tours/london/city/
www.example.com/tours/london/city/suburb/
www.example.com/tours/london/city/suburb/street/

Okay, so the above may be a little extreme. But, I like to break the architecture down to its least common denominator. In this case it might be the suburb where the tour is available.

But, if you are offering other services/products besides /tours/, I would then look at switching the architecture around to accomodate further development within my sub-directories. For example...

www.example.com/london/city/
www.example.com/london/city/suburb/
www.example.com/london/city/suburb/tours/

I would use the above structure if I had multiple offerings for services in London. This way I build upon the existing structure while keeping an easy to remember URI structure and allowing for future development of the site without having to make too many architecture changes. An example would be...

www.example.com/london/city/
www.example.com/london/city/suburb/
www.example.com/london/city/suburb/clubs/
www.example.com/london/city/suburb/kids/
www.example.com/london/city/suburb/restaurants/
www.example.com/london/city/suburb/tours/

The last thing you want to do is start changing the structure after its been indexed. Think well in advance when it comes to the architecture of your web. I've seen many begin one way, find WebmasterWorld and then change everything around only to find themselves starting from ground zero again.

[obsos]

Thanks for your comments (which I will pass on to our developers).

I suppose my main concern is that they (our developers) tend to run the words together ... eg selfdrivetours. I'm wondering if perhaps self-drive-tours is better from a searchability point of view, thus breaking the words up into separate searchable words instead of one long string which in much less likely to be searched upon.

eg /gettingtolondon/placestogo.htm or
/mapdirections.htm

Cheers
Robyn