Are keywords in rewritten URL still usefull for SEO?

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Are keywords in rewritten URL still usefull for SEO?

or am I 10 years to late?

tunafish

2:15 pm on Apr 21, 2010 (gmt 0)

I have a real estate tour website. URL of the tour is mytoursite.com/index.php?ref=001

Is a rewrite like this still usefull for SEO: mytoursite.com/agencyname/agentname/001/apartment-for-sale-manhattan-new-york
or should I just save the hassle and go for: mytoursite.com/001

These keywords are allready in my pagetitle and META tags anyway.

Btw any tips on how to keyword this data would be appreciated as well.
Right now I have in my title:
"Agent007 from bondrealestate presents: apartment for sale - Manhattan, New York"
and in my keywords:
"agent007, bondrealestate, apartment, for sale, manhatten, new york"
I can also throw in the mix: square feet, number of bedrooms and bathrooms etc.

jdMorgan

2:13 am on Apr 24, 2010 (gmt 0)

Get all of the fluff out of that URL, and say what you (ultimately) sell. That's what people search for, and they likely don't much care who the realtor is.

I don't emphasize that kind of fluff in the <head> title, and I wouldn't put primary emphasis on it in the description either.

While keyword-in-url is not one of the top ranking factors, it *is* one of the top eyeball-grabbers when highlighted in titles, descriptions, and URLs in search results.

If you sell blue widgets in Elbonia, then those three words should take precedence in the URL and in both the <head> title and the page body title (e.g. in the <h1> tag).

People like concise. Fast. Focused. Short titles. Especially when they're bolded in the SERPs.

And highlighted words in URLs stand our most if the highlights are all together:
http:example.com/apartment-manhattan-new-york/001 [webmasterworld.com]

Opinions may vary. That's mine. Analyze your search referral stats in depth, and you may decide differently. :)

Jim

tunafish

10:12 am on Apr 24, 2010 (gmt 0)

Thanks very much for the reply Jim!

Mark_A

10:46 am on Apr 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

I recently reasearched a keyword for the top ten ranking sites in google. It was quite a competitive keyword.

Top ranking was a site whose url was www.keyword.com .. it had no inward links and a low PR, lower than sites that listed below it.

So I think keyword in url still matters.

jdMorgan

12:58 pm on Apr 27, 2010 (gmt 0)

I didn't say keyword-in-URL doesn't matter, just that it "is not one of the top ranking factors." And in discussions of this nature, such details matter.

Also, I'd term "www.keyword.com" as an example of keyword-in-domain rather than keyword-in-URL, with this distinction based on how SEs treat the keywords in each path-part, not on the technical names of the "pieces" of URLs. It may be reasonably posited that a search engine will consider that a site having a particular keyword in its domain name may be more specifically-focused on that keyword (and therefore more relevant in a particular search results listing) than a site having one or a few pages with that keyword in the URL-path-part.

No matter -- my point was to "get rid of the fluff" and focus the words in the URL/title/description on what is being offered on this particular page, leaving only enough of the additional "overhead" info in the URL --the "/001" in the present example)-- for the site's script(s) to be able to function.

Jim

Mark_A

7:00 am on Apr 28, 2010 (gmt 0)

I have come across a few micro-sites that genuine bricks and mortar companies have set up to promote just their widget-widgettype products which are intended to rank well for widget widgettype.

Their URLs are www.widget-widgettype.com I am not yet convinced that they are a good idea. One that I recently came across I thought the content and that would have been better bolstering their main company site rather than a microsite.