Is there a limit to using keywords in URL?

[Oimachi2]

Let's say I want a service for a local city.

What would be acceptable:

A. www.example.com/chicago.htm

B. www.example.com/chicago-affordable-dentists.htm

C. www.example.com/chicago-dentists.htm

Of course this page would be about dentist in Chicago ;)

[tedster]

Of course there's a limit - in fact, keywords in the URL are a very minor signal today and are pretty much part of "old school" SEO of the kind that Google is wiping out in recent months.

In short, this is not the way to rank! Choose an appropriate keyword in the URL and then let it go and serve your visitors. Be a marketer, not a technical trickster.

[aakk9999]

I agree with Tedster. What I would do is:
If your domain name is obvious to be about dentists (e.g. www. dentists .com) then I would go just for /chicago.htm

If from domain name is not obvious that it is for dentists, then /chicago-dentists.htm would be acceptable.
If you have two pages, one about expensive dentists and other about affordable/cheap dentists, then /chicago-affordable-dentists.htm or /chicago/affordable-dentists.htm would be acceptable.

But then again, if your domain is only about chicago services and it is obvious from domain name, then just /dentists.htm would be suitable.

So it really depends on what other information your site presents and how it is structured.

I would normally try to give some clue from URL to visitors too as from well structured URL they can often deduct what else there **might** be on the site.

[CainIV]

In many ways the "new school" is anti-keywords in the url, as it is easy to overoptimize but difficult to de-opt

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

keywords in the URL are a very minor signal today and are pretty much part of "old school" SEO of the kind that Google is wiping out in recent months.

They are actually still advising us to do it.

URL structure

A site's URL structure should be as simple as possible. Consider organizing your content so that URLs are constructed logically and in a manner that is most intelligible to humans (when possible, readable words rather than long ID numbers). For example, if you're searching for information about aviation, a URL like http: //en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Aviation will help you decide whether to click that link. A URL like http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f730f1, is much less appealing to users.

Consider using punctuation in your URLs. The URL http://www.example.com/green-dress.html is much more useful to us than http://www.example.com/greendress.html. We recommend that you use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) in your URLs.

[support.google.com...]

[deadsea]

Keywords in the url may not help for ranking purposes. But the url is visible in the SERPs and keywords in the url helps click through rate.

And anytime your url is pasted into a forum or email, it helps there too. People are more likely to click if they can see what it is likely to be.

I'd recommend using the shortest url you can. You don't want people to have to use a url shortener service to share your site on twitter. One keyword, maybe two. Drop the .html or .htm on the end and the www.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Keywords in the url may not help for ranking purposes.

Isn't G's highlighting of the keywords in the URL in the SERPs a strong indication that they do use them?

[google.com...]

[rlange]

BeeDeeDubbleU wrote:
Isn't G's highlighting of the keywords in the URL in the SERPs a strong indication that they do use them?

They also highlight keywords in the snippet/meta description, but don't use it for ranking.

--
Ryan

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

This does happen but when you see it highlighted in the snippet it is more commonly because Google has chosen its own snippet as opposed to the description.

[Oimachi2]

Thanks everybody for the great advice, seems like the trend that works now is "deoptimization", this could be a pretty nice niche industry actually!

I'm deoptiming all over the place, one keyword per page, shortening my URL's with 301 redirect to something shorter.

Seems like tools that give you keyword density can also be useful, not to increase it, but to decrease it. It catches things you forget like Alt tags and so on.

Seems like less is better than more nowadays, so I shaving off all keywords.