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Domain & Page Names - Your Quick Guide.

Relevant Domain and page names.

With millions of web pages to choose from the search engines are always looking for pointers of relevance to a particular search phrase.

Search engine algorithms look at the full we address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator)of a web page to help determine relevance along with the other information from the page content and its title etc . So if for instance you had two almost identical web pages containing information about  meta tags,  one URL was named

. internetsystems.com/meta_tags.asp

and the other one was

.pollysmithcookandwashhouse.com/page43562-8a.asp

Guess which one would feature the highest in the search results, for the search term "meta tags"

Yes that's correct the page with the relevant words in its domain and page name will always be taken into consideration when determining a pages relevance for a particular search phrase.

That is not to say irrelevant domain and page names never feature highly in search results because they do however the relevant domains and page names give an obvious advantage.

The other reason that relevant domains and page names are used is that the human can always remember internetsystems.com/meta_tags.asp  but will never remember the other domain and irrelevant page number system.

The advantages of having an easily remembered web page should be obvious however this simple rule is often overlooked by small and large companies alike.

Having relevant keywords in the URL (or web page address) does make a big difference and typically leads to SEO benefits even though it is entirely possible to rank well without having the keyword there.

So some might say "it's not an important ranking factor" and in general, there may be some truth in that, as many highly ranked pages can contain irrelevant characters.

However, the relevancy boost, from having good keywords in your domain and page names  is very worthwhile because as well as getting better rankings for a particular search phrase it also increases the odds that someone will click your listing in the search results.

This human aspect of Domain and webpage keyword optimisation is very important. A keyword in your URL tends to help make it clear to  potential site visitors where your link might lead, and tells them in advance of clicking the link that this is a relevant search result.

Straightforward easily remembered relevant URLs will also help the search engines when deciding what a webpage is all about, as previously mentioned please bear in mind that searchers have problems remembering longer, complicated dynamic URLS for later use. That's one reason why good relevant, static URLS are more user friendly as they are much easier to remember.

In the main, keywords in your domain and web page URLs are good to have, but what's most important is that your URLs are easily crawled and indexed by search engines. Long irrelevant confusing URLs may in some circumstance even keep your pages from ever showing up in the search results at all. Keep Doman and page name URLs simple and relevant and you can't go far wrong.

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