Keyword use in page URL

Overview

Keyword use in page URL is a technique much in the same vein as Keyword use in domain name.

There is currently no evidence that Google is penalising sites which place keywords in the URL of the webpage, but this should be reviewed over time with regards to how important this ranking factor will be going forward.

The importance of keywords in the domain name

The below is an extract from the article which details the history if keyword in Domain name. Much of the below can apply to keyword use in URL but as with domain name should be reviewed in light of the recent Google EMD update.

Originally it took a lot of money, time and effort to create a website.

During this period people who had invested in a domain name which matched what they did was seen to have benefits and reinforce the likely content a website would have.

In short the domain name could give Google a good ranking signal.

Over the last decade the cost of publishing to the web has dropped drastically and for little or no money it’s now possible to publish on the web.

This has lead to a gold rush for people registering domain names with the express purpose of gaining valuable Google rank.

After a recent Algorithm update Google has started to weed out some of these no value domain in an attempt to increase the quality of its search results.

Although Exact matches may be dead for domain names (this is still disputed by Google though) a close match is still a viable alternative..

Therefore when analysing the competition it’s important to stay within the acceptable range as not to be penalised.

Google proof your search engine optimisation for keyword in the domain name

While it is true that no one outside of Google knows the mechanism for determining rank in its search engine listing, we do know Google likes the top ten pages for a given phrase for a reason, and it is this fact we can use to formulate our strategy.
The reason for looking at the top ten as a whole is that it allows us to remove the ‘freak’ results of any one website.

Age of web sites for the phrase Prince William on 10th December 2012 on Google UK

We could look at any phrase but it makes sense to look at a popular term. It’s also important to note that the internet is a fluid place and analysis on one day and with one search engine can be different on another day on another engine.

Looking at the top ten sites for this phrase

Search term: “prince william”
Number of keywords: 0 to 2
Keyword density: 0% to 67%

Search term: “prince”
of keywords: 0 to 2
Keyword density: 0% to 33%

Search term: “william”
Number of keywords: 0 to 2
Keyword density: 0% to 33%

Keywords “prince” or “william”
Number of keywords: 0 to 4
Keyword density: 0% to 33%

In an ideal world you would look to hit in the high range of the above, but as you can see this would cause one or more to go outside the ideal range and in this instance you would have to gauge the most important phrases and sub phrases of the key phrase you were trying to optimise for.