URL naming... rewriting to match page contents?

[robert76]

I can find posts about URL naming from long ago but nothing in last few years.
How important is it that a page for ecommerce be www.domain.com/productonthepage.html as compared to www.domain.com/random.html?
I have some old pages with the url not matching what's on those pages. These pages are performing very well on a money basis and
typically 5th or 6th in search results. Wondering if I would be shooting myself in the foot to try to make them perform even better and possibly
move up in ranking by changing the name to match the product, with 301 of old name to new.
If it weren't that it was pages I was generating most of our revenue from it would be easy to test.

[JesterMagic]

I think it was more important years ago in terms of ranking but less so now, at least to Google.

As a user it is easier to remember a url that has descriptive words (though this is also less important for users with phones who don't see much of the url.

Finally in search results it makes your result stand out more if any of the words in the url are used in the search as they will be in bold.

So IMO there is still positive benefit and if you use a proper 301 redirect their shouldn't be any negatives (beyond creating all the 301 redirects).

Maybe do a test run with a few urls to see if you notice any improvement in a few weeks?

[LuisRevuelto]

I consider URL naming is still important given that it let you include words that match with you main keywords o highlighted products.

Although as JesterMagic says, it is not so important as long time ago was in terms of remember the URL. Nowadays most of users will get your page from other platforms such as social networks, emailing campaings or search results of course. But your URL must be always friendly and help to the bots identify what your page contents.

So I cheers you up to test this technique with some URLs as Jester recommend, and tell us the results :)

[keyplyr]

Changing file names would have more of a negative impact, at least for a few months, than any small keyword gain you might achieve in doing so.

I'd leave the old pages alone, and consider using more relevant file names going forward.

[LuisRevuelto]

At the begining you may lose traffic from the URLs that you change if they appear in first positions, because of losing the position of the old URLs. But you may also gain traffic if the experience of users is better (the 301 redirect is working well, loading quick and user finds products easierly) and it make your URLs appear higher.