The importance of the URL string for SEO

Hi Jon,

What you describe is a fairly common CMS issue, but nothing too serious all the same.

While you are right to say that Google cares about keywords in the url, adding the /pages/ folder may very slightly dilute the effect of the other keywords present.

Having said that however the page's title is much more important that it's urls, especially as the right keywords are present anyway, so this wouldn't, as far as I'm concerned be an issue.

Also, people are unlikely to be put off by this, as most urls/CMS systems tend to have at least one "organisational" folder or a unique identifier string (such as /XYU12341/ anyway.

Personally, therefore I'd say that if SEO is a priority there are almost certainly going to be more important issues than this one to pit your whits against.

 

Hi

We are currently redeveloping the Woodland Trust website and using Microsoft's MOSS content management technology as its base - and there is one "feature" it has that is concerning me from an SEO point of view.

The way pages are stored in the directory structure, place all pages in a folder called /pages, all images in /images and documents in /documents - resulting in a url string for example of woodland-trust.org.uk/campaigns/climate-change/Pages/what-can-I-do.aspx

With the use of keywords in urls being so important to Google etc and the relevance a page being supported by the use of the pages keywords within the url string - I am concerned that the insertion of /Pages/ into every url will have a negative effect.

It is also not very user friendly to have /Pages/ in the url as it serves no  purpose to help describe the pages content - it is purely a technical thing.

Would appreciate peoples thoughts, is this something I should be concerned about and actively persue a technical solution to try and cloak its existence with an isapi filter?

Many thanks

Jon Parsons