Google Loving Keywords in URLs Now?

Posted by MC on Aug 27, 2009 in SEO TIPs | SEO Consulting | Comments Off

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A WebmasterWorld thread has new discussion around how important it is to have keywords in the URL. This is a very old SEO topic, but new chatter in the industry is saying how keywords in the URLs actually make more of an impact in your rankings in Google today, more than it has in a long time.

Now, keywords in the URL can mean two things (well, more than two, but we will discuss only two) or both of these two things. There is the domain name, i.e. domain.com and there is the filename, i.e. domain.com/filename.html. There is always a benefit to getting a short keyword specific domain name, because people link to you by your name (i.e. people link to my web development shop as RustyBrick and not Web Development because the name is RustyBrick). But the actual words in the URL, just looking at the URL component and not the links you get, how much does that impact your rankings at Google?

Many are of the opinion that Google is really looking more at the keywords in the URL. In fact, Matt Cutts surprised me when he mentioned that they do help in his WordCamp presentation. And now Tedster, the WebmasterWorld administrator, said: