Keyword in filename

Does it count?

[John_Caius]

I know that keywords in the domain name, e.g. www.keyword.com , count in the Google algorithm, partly directly and partly through text in incoming links. However, I haven't yet managed to pin down whether or not the keyword counts for anything if it's in the filename, e.g. www.domain.com/keyword.htm . Or would an identical page with identical links etc. etc. at www.domain.com/qwerty.htm count the same for the keyword search?

Just to know whether I'm using my efforts wisely...

Thanks.

[Yidaki]

John, if you target "keyword" at the page "keyword.htm" why not using "keyword.htm" instead of "xyz.htm"? It looks much nicer and has a better ROI if somebody thinks about clicking your link at the result pages.

[rfgdxm1]

AFAICT, Google does indeed give benefit for keyowrd in file name.

[John_Caius]

What's ROI in this context? [I know 'region of interest' but I guess that's not it.

What I'm really driving at is if I have a page about cats and dogs, is there a benefit in having a URL of www.domain.com/cats-and-dogs.htm over www.domain.com/catsanddogs.htm?

[ukgimp]

Beware of the looking like spam element. You decide which you prefer:

cats_and_dog_for_sale_in_the_uk.htm
or
catsdogssale.htm

Keep em short and sweet if possible and logical, keep a theme in the way you name your pages IMHO. I think there is going to be an upper limit to how much impact they have depending on size and a small amount in ranking. Take this sites urls, all numbers. You still get WebmasterWorld pages ranking high based on the design and content, not mainly on the page title.

[Mohamed_E]

John,

ROI is Return on Investment.

Googleguy has suggested that hyphens are better at delimiting words in a URL than underscores:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Also check the post by WebGuerilla, msg #12 in the same thread.

There have been several recent discussions of that issue here, use site search to find out more.

[HuhuFruFru]

what about keywords in other files like gif, jpeg, pdf, doc ...?

[Yidaki]

>ROI is Return on Investment.
>ROI in this context? [I know 'region of interest'

Oohps, yes i'm not native english ... ;)

Sorry, i guess ROI is the wrong phrase since i don't mean a better return of investment. What i mean is that the click trough rate (CTR) could be higher if you use descriptive file names / urls .

(... and lower if you-use-too-descriptive-hyphenated-file-names. I agree with ukgimp's suggestion.)

[John_Caius]

Yes, I agree with ukgimp too. :)

So how many hyphens are reasonable? All my plain content pages (currently around 90) are of the form /catsanddogs.htm but I've got just a couple of pages with a possible revenue potential of the form /floppy-hat-for-sale.htm i.e. four words separated by hyphens. It would be no trouble to modify these filenames if it was worthless or counter-productive to bother with the hyphens. Obviously I've optimised the pages themselves and inbound links for 'floppy hat for sale' anyway.

[John_Caius]

Any consensus as to whether four words in the filename separated by hyphens is ok or not?

[Quinn]

It should be fine John.
I would leave them as they are.

Q