What’s in a name? Well, when it comes to the names of the files and folders in your site, a lot. Creating keyword density on your pages can help lift your site in search listings, but there are other places besides in your markup that can help out. Search engines index keywords in the names of files and folders in order to understand the content of your pages so choosing relevant, descriptive names for them is important. Here are a few recommendations to keep in mind when naming your files.
- Include keywords in file and folder names where natural, and certain ubiquitous files such as in the name of the logo , and default style sheet.
- Separate keywords in the file and folder names with a hyphen rather than an underscore to ensure that search engines can read each word individually rather than as one large word. For example, most search engines will read a file named my-page.html as “my” “page”, where is my_page.html would be read as “my_page”, which is not likely to match a search query. Google recently updated its system to recognize individual words in file names separated by an underscore, stick with hyphen-delimited keywords in your file names to be safe.
- Keep your keywords brief, and relevant to your audience . The more keywords you add, the more you dilute the power of each one.
- Contrary to rumors, a.html file extension will not rank higher than a.php extension, so feel free to use the one that is appropriate for your page.
Post Tags:
Browse Timeline
Comments ( 1 Comment )
I’ve had a quick look at your site, it looks very interesting. Maybe you’d like to send a synopsis through for us to publish for you? Please make it as factual as possible and include a short bio of yourself and a link to your site at the end.
ITInsonstOf added these pithy words on
Dec 01 09 at
4:01 am
