Do Search Engines Look at Keywords in URLs?

Is there any value in using keywords in the URLs of web pages? Would a search engine look at keywords that you might include in the addresses of your pages, and associate those keywords with the content of your pages in the search engine’s index?

If so, how would a search engine go about looking at the web addresses indicated in the URLs to your pages, and break them down into meaningful parts to identify keywords?

Breaking URLs down into parts may also play a role in how the pages of a web site might be crawled by a search engine.

A newly published Yahoo patent application gives us some ideas on how it might extract keywords from the URLs of pages, and rank them, as well as using information uncovered in the process to determine which pages to crawl first from a web site.

Techniques for Tokenizing URLs
Invented by Krishna Leela Poola and Arun Ramanujapuram
Assigned to Yahoo
US Patent Application 20090083266
Published March 26, 2009
Filed November 6, 2007

A search engine will look at many different signals to determine what a page on the Web is about, and attempt to rank pages based upon keywords that might be an indication of the subject matter or content of those pages.

Many of those keywords are extracted from the content of pages themselves, but a search engine can look at other information associated with pages, such as the addresses of the pages.

Keywords may also be extracted from the URLs of pages, by using an algorithm that can break the URL into components, understanding the structure of those URLs, and removing candidate keywords from the different parts found within the URL.

Parts of URLs

The patent application provides a definition for different parts of URLs:

Scheme - This section of a URL identifies the internet protocol used to access a resource, such as HTTP or FTP

Authority - The part of a URL that identifies the host server where the documents or resources are located, or the domain name.

Path - This is the information following the slash character after the authority, or domain name, and it identifies the specific page or resource

Query arguments - A string that may appear in a path that can be broken down into name and value pairs, such as “category=shirts”

Fragments - A fragment identifies a subsection within a page that might be pointed to in a URL, ususally started with the “#” symbol

5 Reasons Why Design Matters To SEO

1. Good design matters to search engines

Over at Search Engine Journal I wrote an article titled SEO Quality Indicators & The Heap Paradox where I basically point out that when evaluating a website, search engines determine the value of a site by adding up “quality indicators.” Quality indicators are signs that your website is a good, strong, well produced source of solid content. The good news is that many quality indicators are related to the design of your site.

For example: a great SEO design will:

1. Minimize code while highlighting content
2. Place the content towards the top of the site’s source code
3. Use html tags and CSS as optimal indicators of your site’s content

2. Good design makes marketing easier

On the Internet, search marketing amounts to getting other sites to mention you on their websites. You do this by building interesting content for other sites to link to. However, website editors are much less likely to link to a site with a poor design, even if that site has great content.

As a marketer of online content, I can tell you without hesitation that the number of one hurdle to promoting your site online is a bad design. A bad design can ruin great services or content.
3. Good design makes branding easier

The holy grail of SEO is to become an authority in your niche. Once you are an authority, you become a link magnet, and your online marketing takes place automatically without much work.

The job of becoming an online authority is made much easier by having a great design that screams quality.
4. Good design gets you noticed by the design community

I didn’t realize this until recently, but one of the largest communities on the Internet is the design community. There are hundreds of design galleries and other sites that highlight great website and blog designs. These end up being free and very valuable links.

As an example, take my site College Crunch which has been featured in the WordPress.org Showcase Gallery as one of the Top Rated sites. This opportunity opened my eyes to the positive effects of having a great site design.
5. Good design lowers your bounce rate

A lot of people don’t know this, but Google and other search engines actually monitor the way visitors interact with your website. If people leave your website moments after first arriving, they are said to have “bounced.” The search engines take this statistic very seriously because if people leave your site quickly, it means they were not happy with the search result. Since search engines want good search results, they move sites with low bounce rates up and sites with high bounce rates down.

Moral of the story: people are more likely to stay at your site and look around if it looks nice. This has a postive effect on your search rankings.

SEO guru 50 tips for online retailers

SEO for online retailers is the process of improving a website potential in order to gain more organic non-paid traffic from the major search engines. Normally, SEO uplift doesn't happen overnight and it can take a long while to rank well for non brand key terms.

The rule of thumb is this: the more competition a relative term has, the harder you'll find it to rank for the term. With that said, you've got to start somewhere and there at least 50 ways I can think of to improve your SEO.

Choose your hosting provider carefully

1. If you're targeting one specific region, say the UK, ensure that the physical IP address is country specific which will improve the likelihood of ranking in the UK

2. Always opt for a fixed IP address even if it costs slightly more

3. Run an IP address search to ensure the IP address hasn't been black listed before. Domain Tools are an excellent source for quick IP address lookup

4. Ensure the server returns accurate response:

* 200 OK The request has succeeded - As an example you should see this server response for your homepage (www.sitename.com)
* 301 Moved Permanently - As an example you should see this server response for your non www version of your homepage (sitename.com)
* 302 Found - Use this server response only if you are redirecting temporary
* 404 Not Found - Always display a correct 404 response so you can get an indication when a page is broken for better user experience


Increase crawl rates because you can never get enough of Google

5. To check when your site was last crawled and indexed, search for site:sitename.com and play with “date range” advanced search options

6. Update the site's content as often as possible. For online retailers, new promotions and offers offer a fantastic opportunity to update their content

7. Ensure pages are loading quickly by analyzing your code, content and images. Web Page Analyzer is an excellent source to analyze a page load time

8. Fix duplicate content issue such as having two versions of your homepage, for example www.sitename.com and www.sitename.com/index.php

9. Add an XML site map and submit it to the major search engines


Ensure image optimisation across the site to enjoy traffic from Google image search

9. Keep images on a folder level rather than a subdomain so sitename.com/images/ is better than images.sitename.com

10. Use a descriptive name for the image, such as the product name

11. Use alt text for all your images and use a descriptive name again for the image alt text name

12. Use caption by placing a small description directly under, on top or on the side of your image

13. When possible save the image as jpg format

14. Use a free tool such as xenu to find images with no alt text


Ensure metadata optimisation to get high level of qualified traffic

15. Ensure that every page has unique metadata in terms of page title and page description

16. Limited page title to 70 characters and page description to 150 characters

17. Don't bother too much about keywords, do something else

18. Optimise each page around one key term

19. Place the most important term first, followed by a soft (non spammy) call to action and brand

20. For product pages, opt for an auto generate metadata solution based on + at

21. Use AdWords ads to test the best text for better CTR by creating a few ad variation in AdWords which include your key term


Content is truly king

22. Every page should have unique content which reads well for users (and therefore for the search engine spiders as well)

23. Don't repeat the key term more than 3 times so to avoid keyword stuffing

24. Place the key term in the page H1 title, image alt text and once in bold

25. Use "recommended products" to link between similar products to increase their relevancy


Apply essential URL and coding tweaks

26. Use robot.txt to block parts of the site you don't wish the engines to index

27. Offer an HTML site map which is auto updated based on the XML site map

28. For sites running on PHP use an .htaccess file to avoid content duplication

29. Use breadcrumbs navigation across the site for better user experience and SEO

30. From time to time, view your site using a text browser such as SEO Browser to "see" how spiders are likely to find your on page content

31. If your site architecture has more than three levels, restructure it so to make the information more accessible to both users and spiders

32. Keep URLs short for better SEO and to create a better viral effect as short URLs are more memorable

33. Include your key term such as a product title in the URL


Apply essential maintenance from time to time

34. Fix all your 404 errors and consider redirecting to a more appropriate page

35. When products are removed from stock or discontinued ensure that a 301 is placed to the main category or to a similar product

36. When linking to another site, consider checking whether you're linking to a bad neighborhood using a free tool such as text link checker

37. If you have multiple domains unify around one domain using a 301 redirect taking into account links pointing to each domain, domain age and the domain name


The Google PageRank issue

38. Don't pay too much attention to Google PR as it won't effect your ranking

39. If you want to control page rank, use a nofollow HTML attribute on pages such as "terms and conditions", "privacy policy" etc


Content is king, so start blogging

40. Place your blog on a directory level so www.sitename.com/blog/ rather than a sub domain blog.sitename.com

41. Blogging at least once a week will help increase your crawl rate

42. Read The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog


Get more links, otherwise no one will see you

43. If you're considering directories as part if your link acquisition, focus on quality reviewed directories such as Yahoo and Best of the Web

44. Don't pay for links, you'll get caught at some point

45. Help your customers help you by placing on each page an easy way to share content using a sharing tool such as AddToAny

46. Ask for links take 1 - place a nice soft request in your website sale confirmation email to link back to your site

47. Ask for links take 2 - ask your suppliers and contractors for a link

48. Give blogger prior notice of new products and ask for a review

49. Offer great products at competitive prices and the links will come organically

50. Kick off a social media strategy to encourage discussion (and links) on social networks and other user-powered sites