21 Great SEO Tips From Google's Matt Cutts

[MattL]

In my experience (which is a few hundred sites' worth), there are some conflicting bits of advice in the collective wisdom you'll find from big SEO blogs.

First, remember that everything changes. A rule that was prescient in 2004 may have absolutely no bearing today (in fact, it's often the case). As Google has evolved, it's also gotten a lot smarter about things that used to ding you even though they were valid.

Second, optimizing for Google is (IMHO) very different from optimizing for MSN and Yahoo!.

Thanks to ISAPI_Rewrite (mod_rewrite for you Apache fans), I have tested just these variations over the past 3 years.

Google
Google doesn't care very much about URL structure. I'm guessing that this is because their URL canonicalization basically flattens everything out.

In Ken's case, Google won't show any preference between the following:
example.com/City/RealEstate.htm
example.com/city-realestate.htm
example.com/cityrealestate.htm
... and so on.

Google cares much more about:
1) the fact that the URL is the 5th on the home page
2) The link's text (or ALT text) is relevant to the overall content of the site
3) The link's text is relevant to the destination page
4) The Title and (ideally) H1 tag on the destination page also reflects the inbound link text

Yahoo! & MSN
A different beast, here. These guys LOVE folders. Or, rather, they really love <term> immediately following a slash. Slam dunk, home run, whatever you want to call it.

Now, there may be some relevance to these engines regarding depth, but I've successfully hit Top 10 (and often #1) with a 3 deep URL:

example.com/Illinois/City/<term>.htm

So, my optimal recommendation is:
example.com/City/RealEstate.htm

Google will follow it regardless and score its rank based on actual linkage depth, while Yahoo! and MSN will preferentially (sometimes even obscenely) score the URL.

-MattL

[kensmith]

Originally Posted by Kristina The URL name is not the <only> reason why Jeff is showing up that high. I think for the purposes of this discussion if I were starting off a new page, I would do it city-real-estate.html.

Only reason for ranking, no. Heck it may have nothing to do with it, that is the fun part of this. The point was only that Jeff created a new page and used that format. Also that Google obviously can read the terms from within the URL even w/o the -'s.

Personally I don't like the look of /arlington-heights-real-estate.html, and it can get worse for a city like /elk-grove-village-real-estate.html. All of the -'s look spammy to me, so if they are the same to the search engine I think it's better to not have them. That is just a personal preference.

Now if Matt is correct and the folders mean nothing to the search engines then from an organizational standpoint that makes more sense. /realestate/cityname.html or /cityname/realestate.html both are easier to use for organizing everything. That does go against a lot of what I have read, but I did ask Matt to come and give his input for a reason. He likes to test things and has enough sites to do it with.

It is interesting that we have 3 completely different thoughts on this topic. This is something that I am going to have to play with for sure.

<arlington-heights-real-estate.html>

I don't like the look of that either. To many words! We were talking about City-Relocation.html before which makes much more sense.

I think like anything you need to do what makes sense for your users.

[kensmith]

The thing is it needs to be consistant. So you can't use city-relocation.html then turn around and use cityrealestate.html. Even with relocation, elk-grove-village-relocation.html still would be the same thing.

BTW, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.

[MattL]

Again, the upside is that if you have access to mod_rewrite (or isapi_rewrite), you can easily support both and change your links at will.

The way my sites work, when you enter:

/Illinois/<City>/RealEstate.html

it actually maps to:

/realestate.asp?city=<city>&state=Illinois

You can just as easily write a rule that would convert city-realestate.html the same way.

Like I said, I tried it multiple ways. Google didn't really care much about how I structured the links themselves, but Yahoo! and MSN went bonkers when I changed from querystrings to folders.

I've got a few spare domains... should we run a test?

-Matt

I agree. As I was thinking about the amount of words in the URL I was looking at our company site that we just redid a few months ago. I didn't have a role in redoing it but I know they went through and paid attention to the URLs when renaming them.

Ex: http://www.advancedaccess.com/productsservices/ (Check the URLs on that page, as the example)

We kept it to three words or less in the file names and have four main categories, or file names. I think it makes sense.

[MattL]

Oh, and it's also how this works:
http://www.pmpvow.com/Browse/Schaumburg

-Matt

[kensmith]

Originally Posted by MattL I've got a few spare domains... should we run a test? -Matt

Matt I was thinking that I would run a few tests on this. I actually want to do it from an established domain as we will see the results much quicker. Just need to find a few keywords that will be equal in how competative they are.

We could also run it with new sites that all target the same keyword. But it would have to be an easy term to avoid any new site issues that might slow down the results in Google.

What do you think?

[kensmith]

Originally Posted by Kristina I agree. As I was thinking about the amount of words in the URL I was looking at our company site that we just redid a few months ago. I didn't have a role in redoing it but I know they went through and paid attention to the URLs when renaming them. Ex: http://www.advancedaccess.com/productsservices/ (Check the URLs on that page, as the example) We kept it to three words or less in the file names and have four main categories, or file names. I think it makes sense.

With those examples the realestate/any-city-name.html would work as well as anycityname/real-estate.html. Think that it would be worth testing both of these along with anycitynamerealestate.html and any-city-name-real-estate.

[MattL]

Originally Posted by kensmith With those examples the realestate/any-city-name.html would work as well as anycityname/real-estate.html. Think that it would be worth testing both of these along with anycitynamerealestate.html and any-city-name-real-estate.

Now the only reason I didn't do it that way was because of possible keyword dilution. Since "RealEstate" is a very common term, I'd rather have the city name first. That's entirely gut instinct, though, and not based on any formative knowledge.

I was thinking, how about this domain?
http://www.prorealestateagents.com/

I've been sitting on it for almost two years and all that's running there is one script like we're discussing. I'd be happy to wire it up one way or the other and have a go. We can get the .net and try it the opposite way, then see what the results are in a month or two.

-Matt