21 Great SEO Tips From Google's Matt Cutts

[Jim Messenger]

SEO Egghead created an excellent summary titled "21 Great SEO Tips From Google's Matt Cutts."

It's definitely worth a read, a bookmark, and a digg.

Jim

[kensmith]

Wondering about this comment:

"Use user-friendly URLs like "african-elephants.html," and not "343432ffsdfsdfdfasffgddddd.html." Don't overdo it either — african-elephants-and-their-habitats-etc-etc-etc-etc.html. Vanessa Fox. 2006."

What would be better city-relocation.html or cityrelocation.html?

[naplesrealestate]

Why not set up a directory for the city and have a page with relocation - for example yourdomain/city/relocation.com

[kensmith]

Each level down (each folder level "/") is saying the page is that much less important to the search engines. At least that is what I have gathered from reading forums and SEO blogs. Any other thoughts on that?

[naplesrealestate]

I thought it was the number of clicks from the homepage.

My thoughts:

- Page Level - At one point I have talked to two SEOs that have said if you can keep it in the main level directory, do that. This is why all of our PMs will be in the same level (ie. domain.com/pagetitle.html) but you will have the ability to create folders to provide consistency, topics, etc. by doing domain.com/city/pagetitle.html). That said, I would put my most important pages in the root level directory. If I have specific topics (I wanted to create a community section involving 10-15 pages) I would probably make a folder /community/ to keep things pretty.

- Page Name - My understanding is that city-relocation.html would be best. There is a small amount of traffic for that type of keyword query and it would be thought of as two separate words.

- Number of Clicks - That would be a Site/Page Trust type of thing. Going to the thought of PageRank... Your homepage is the 'most' important aspect, so your main levels would want to be accessible from your homepage, then then on down. Ken has a great setup in how he has structured his site. Roxanne as well. We chatted about that in AA Forums as well, I believe.

[kensmith]

Originally Posted by Kristina My thoughts: - Page Level - At one point I have talked to two SEOs that have said if you can keep it in the main level directory, do that. This is why all of our PMs will be in the same level (ie. domain.com/pagetitle.html) but you will have the ability to create folders to provide consistency, topics, etc. by doing domain.com/city/pagetitle.html). That said, I would put my most important pages in the root level directory. If I have specific topics (I wanted to create a community section involving 10-15 pages) I would probably make a folder /community/ to keep things pretty.

That is basicly how I understood this also. Keep it at the main level if you can, but for lessor pages use a second level to keep things organized.

Originally Posted by Kristina - Page Name - My understanding is that city-relocation.html would be best. There is a small amount of traffic for that type of keyword query and it would be thought of as two separate words.

I wonder about this one. If you do a search for Arlington Heights Real Estate in Google you will see that Google can read the URL correctly w/o the "-'s" as it highlights adrhi.com/arlingtonheightsrealestate.asp for Jeff's site. Actually this might have just answered the question as Jeff knows his stuff and this is a new page of his.

Originally Posted by Kristina - Number of Clicks - That would be a Site/Page Trust type of thing. Going to the thought of PageRank... Your homepage is the 'most' important aspect, so your main levels would want to be accessible from your homepage, then then on down. Ken has a great setup in how he has structured his site. Roxanne as well. We chatted about that in AA Forums as well, I believe.

Thanks. The way you link to your site is one of the most important items for "seo" IMO. That is why I don't like all pages linking to every page in the site. You have just missed the opportunity to tell the search engines which pages are more important and made it so each page has the same value. Not a good idea if you want to go after harder terms.

Originally Posted by kensmith I wonder about this one. If you do a search for Arlington Heights Real Estate in Google you will see that Google can read the URL correctly w/o the "-'s" as it highlights adrhi.com/arlingtonheightsrealestate.asp for Jeff's site. Actually this might have just answered the question as Jeff knows his stuff and this is a new page of his.

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.

[Jim Messenger]

Originally Posted by kensmith Wondering about this comment: "Use user-friendly URLs like "african-elephants.html," and not "343432ffsdfsdfdfasffgddddd.html." Don't overdo it either — african-elephants-and-their-habitats-etc-etc-etc-etc.html. Vanessa Fox. 2006." What would be better city-relocation.html or cityrelocation.html?

Hi Ken,

The tip above illustrates that either one of your choices would be fine. Just don't call them dfnljfnvlj.php. If I had to choose between your options, my preference would be cityrelocation.html

A year ago I would have given a different answer. However, at this time, most SE's see both words even without the hyphen.

[Jim Messenger]

P.S. Hyphenated URL's might add an X number of points with the MSN Junk Page Filter.