SEO Quick-Tip: Do Your URLs Have Keywords?

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By Will - September 10th, 2012

keywording URLs for SEO At Energy Circle PRO, our primary goal is to see independent home performance and energy auditing companies succeed. We firmly believe that in this day and age, a strong web presence is critical in doing so. Here's another quick search engine optimization tip that can help improve your website's presence in search engines, and consequently help you get more business:

If at all possible, each of the URL's on your website should use keyword language related to the content of that page. For example, if you have a page on your site about home energy audits and want to rank well for that term in your area, the URL for that page should have the words "energy audit" in it.

Check out the following two URL's. Which one would you be more likely to click if you were looking for information about home energy audits in Nebraska? (Note: these are just examples, not real URL's.)

1) http://www.homeinsulationexpertsnebraska.com/pages/293158.html

2) http://www.homeinsulationexpertsnebraska.com/home-energy-audit

Probably the second, right? Well, Google appears to be similarly inclined. As Paul Martin recently wrote on the SEOmoz blog:

"There still appears to be two camps on this matter: those who think using keywords in the URL string is of benefit, and those who don’t. I hereby grant you permission to quote me on saying that presently, in Google at least, yes this does indeed help your SEO efforts."

Okay, Paul. Consider yourself quoted.

So, how do you incorporate keywords into your URL's? Well, first of all you have to have a platform that lets you do so (like the Energy Circle PRO platform, for example). Secondly, you need to know what keywords to use. Some principles:

Figure out the keywords you're targeting for your business.
Have a page dedicated exclusively to each of your services, with the related keyword in the title.
Use the same keywords that you use in the title in the URL for that page.

For example, if you offer "spray foam insulation," have a page dedicated exclusively to that service. Talk about why spray foam is good, talk about how your company offers it and why people should choose your company over another. Title the page "spray foam insulation" and have the words "spray foam insulation" in the URL. (Example: "http://www.homeinsulationexpertsnebraska.com/spray-foam-insulation").

Having a strong, keyworded URL is by no means a silver bullet, but, all other factors equal, it could give you an edge on the competition, which could be the difference between your phone ringing and your phone not ringing.

For more information about how web marketing can help your home performance business, be sure to download our free white paper, or feel free to get a hold of us here at Energy Circle PRO.

Comments

All great points here, Will. For my own self-hosted WP site, I've written some custom PHP code that generates what I feel is an optimal structure for the content of my HTML tags, and one that's consistent with the page's URL. I keep my blog post titles extremely short, and key word rich, so that the generated stays within 70 chars. And I've standardized on the "keyword, keyword, ... | brand | location" format that you guys advocate in your whitepaper, where, in my case, the leading sequence of keywords are actually the post or static page title. I've also composed keyword-based WP category names, always assign a post to precisely one category (which ever category is the most appropriate, of course), and include the category name in the post's URL. The WP theme I use for my site, by default, forms the content from the post title and tag line, which, from an SEO perspective, is less than ideal. So I modified the default functionality to get something much better. My guess is the functionality you provide with the EC Pro platform is probably not all that much different from my custom solution, although possibly a bit more generic. Just FYI: Here's an interesting looking article that appeared yesterday (9/27/2012) on the topic of SEO friendly URL structure. I haven't read it yet, but it appears to go into considerable detail. ~John Posted by John Poole on Sep 28, 2012 7:38pm

Darn! I meant to say "HTML tags" in the first paragraph above. I always forget something while trying to type quickly.. :-( Posted by John Poole on Sep 28, 2012 7:52pm

Ah, OK. Including an unquoted HTML tag with angle brackets confuses your CMS. I meant "HTML TITLE TAGS". So there! :-) Posted by John Poole on Sep 28, 2012 7:55pm

And here's the article link. There are some nights when I should just not be permitted on the internet: http://searchengineland.com/seo-friendly-url-syntax-practices-134218 Posted by John Poole on Sep 28, 2012 8:00pm

my question is should you use the exact keyword or should it just be keyword enriched? Posted by Promotion on Dec 14, 2012 9:28am

SEO Quick-Tip: Do Your URLs Have Keywords?

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