SEO Tips: File names.

March 22, 2009

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Filenames: what do they matter. In and of themselves not a huge amount but as part of a correctly structured site the can make a difference if you make them relevant to the content of your page and at the same time keyword relevant.

[Disclaimer: Unless you are in re-building mode don't do this with existing files names on your site. You may lose traffic. It's a good either either to get another domain and start there or put it into place with each new site page you create.]

First off let’s talk about regular sites. Now there are many ways to name a file. You can name it so it’s recognizable to you and easy to add to the site navigation. How about making it rec0gnizable to your customers and also the search engines.

So you have a bunch of searches in front of you for urban t shirts, they look similar, they all show what you’re after what url are you going to pick?

www.clothingcompanydomain.com/page23.html or

www.clothingcompanydomain.com/urban-t-shirts.php

Now this goes for the search engines themselves, they give a little boost to that added relevance given by your filenames. Now obviously these same keywords and relevant text should factor into your page also but it can help establish your brand in the market areas you’re looking to reach.

This also cuts the other way. As well as making pages relevant to what markets you are searching for you can also research other clothing related terms to find which areas may have a committed following or large amount of searches.  The SEO Book Keyword Suggestion tool is great for this, just type in a keyword and it will tell you how many searches there are on a specific topic.

Just remember a small amount of searches is not necessarily a bad thing. If you can own a niche market you will get customers.

Once you have this down you can assign a unique keyword set and filename for every page on your site, giving you greater visibility across a range of searches and the likelihood you will attract more, relevant traffic and more motivated buyers to your site.

Keywords in filenames perform an important element in helping your brand to reach more customers. It is helpful if you use the dash as search engines then are aable to separate words individuallly, so preferably urban-t-shirts.html not urbantshirts.html or urban_t_shirts.html although as you can see here with relevance any format can work. http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=urban+t+shirts

For blogs the same thing applies. WordPress for instance has several filename format. The default ones are assigned by the database so look like /?p=123 but with plugins such as Permalinks you can create meaningful file names like the one for this post seo-tips-file-names. This is a good idea also to get in place on launch.

So something to consider next time you create a new page on your site. It may not change the world but over time it will help as part of your web marketing process.

If you have any questions about this post just email info at groovesk8.com.

Posted in SEO