Successful search engine optimization is not about doing one thing correctly, it is about doing one hundred things correctly. As an SEO professional it is your job to make use of every available means (within Google’s guidelines) to better your rankings. File nomenclature is one of the means that is often overlooked.
While I have not seen any empirical evidence indicating that keyword-laden file names will enhance your rankings for the terms employed, it is my experience that Google does consider filenames in its ranking algorithm. What is certain however, is that Google result pages will highlight search terms found in page names.
Additionally and without question, the keyword-laden page name will increase your “link relevancy.” As the many of the links pointing to your pages will consist only of the URL (which of course includes the page name), keyword-laden links will increase your link relevancy for the terms employed within the URL. This allows you to conduct a completely whitehat “Google bombing” campaign by simply accumulating links into your pages. More about link relevancy and “Google bombing” later.
For instance, www.mobiledia.com, a Web site that consistently ranks well for cell phone related searches, employs a logical and effective file-naming convention. Their Motorola Razr V3i page is aptly named: http://www.mobiledia.com/phones/motorola/razr-v3i.html. Although we cannot take credit for it, this URL perfectly adheres to our recommendations for logical subdirectory and file nomenclature. The page name matches the product name exactly, “razr-v3i.html” The page is located in a subdirectory named for the product manufacturer, “motorola,” and the manufacturer subdirectory is located within a subdirectory named for the product type, “phones.” Clearly, Mobiledia.com understands the finer points of SEO and has implemented them to gain advantage over their considerable competition.
While some “SEO Professionals” might decry this technique as “spammy,” it should be noted that the method is employed by Google and is therefore yet another safe and reliable way to add keyword relevance to our URLs and link anchor text. And as with subdirectory and subdomain names, keep the file names short and accurate in order to reap the benefits without incurring the liabilities.
Spaces and File Names
While utilizing spaces within any file name of any type is generally a bad idea, it is simply incorrect to do so in HTML file names.
Only alphanumerics (0–9, a–z, A–Z), special characters: ($-_.+!*’(),), and reserved characters used for their reserved purposes may be used unencoded within a URL.
While Internet Explorer is very forgiving in this regard, often substituting “%20 (the ASCII character equivalent)” for spaces in HTML file names, most other browsers are not. Therefore, the utilization of keyword phrases within HTML file names allows for three possible options:
Ignore the space bar and simply run the words together, as in “razrv3i.html.”
Substitute the underscore character, “_” for any spaces, as in “razr_v3i.html.”
Substitute the hyphen character, “-” for any spaces, as in “razr-v3i.html.”
The first alternative, running the words together, is the worst of the three. Although it is a common practice for domain names (including searchengineoptimizationsecrets.com) it is the most likely to cause confusion. And while Google can differentiate between unspaced words, there is no guarantee that it will do so accurately. And there is of course, the well known anecdote about Pen Island unwisely choosing the domain, “penisland.com.”
The second alternative, using the underscore character to separate words is a better idea. And while Google ignores the underscore, it is far less likely to be the cause of confusion.
The third alternative, utilizing the hyphen character (often and inaccurately referred to as a “dash”) is the best of the three alternatives as Google reads the hyphen as a space. You will note that in the file name example above, a hyphen has been substituted for the space bar in “razr-v3i.”
Dynamic Page Names
As far as search engine optimization is concerned, wheresoever and whenever possible, it is always advisable to use “hard-coded” page names. As this is not always a viable alternative with many dynamic sites, we shall defer to Google’s advice regarding dynamic URLs:
We’re able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler could overwhelm and crash sites that serve dynamic content, we limit the number of dynamic pages we index. In addition, our crawlers may suspect that a URL with many dynamic parameters might be the same page as another URL with different parameters. For that reason, we recommend using fewer parameters if possible. Typically, URLs with 1-2 parameters are more easily crawlable than those with many parameters.
If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
Don’t use “&id=” as a parameter in your URLs, as we don’t include these pages in our index.
There are however work-arounds, the most popular of these being ‘mod_rewrite’—an apache server module which will allow URLs to be rewritten. This solution is often used to convert dynamic URLs with multiple query strings into static URLs. An example of this would be to convert the dynamic URL, “http://www.domain.com/search.php?day=22&month=june&year=2005″ to “http://www.domain.com/search-22-june-2005.html.”
As server-side scripting is beyond the scope of this site and the author’s area of expertise, I would recommend seeking the advise of a competent Web Developer.
Other File Types
As the vast majority of Web sites utilize various file types in conjunction with HTML, the astute search engine optimization professional should employ keyword terms within the file names of these as well. Image, Acrobat and multimedia files present yet another opportunity to tell Google what your page is all about. As with HTML files the names should be brief, accurate, descriptive and unique.
Using the cell phone example sited above, suitable file names for product photographs would be:
motorola-razr-v3i-front-photo.jpg
motorola-razr-v3i-back-photo.jpg
motorola-razr-v3i-side-photo.jpg
motorola-razr-v3i-closeup-photo.jpg
Acrobat files for our product might employ the following keyword-laden names:
motorola-razr-v3i-brochure.pdf
motorola-razr-v3i-data-sheet.pdf
motorola-razr-v3i-user-manual.pdf
Multimedia files for our cell phone might utilize the following names:
motorola-razr-v3i-30-second-spot.wmv
motorola-razr-v3i-30-second-spot.mov
motorola-razr-v3i-flash-movie.swf
Finally—please do not name any files using long spammy descriptions like, “buy-cheapest-discount-motorola-razr-v3i-cell-phone.jpg.” This type of nomenclature could get you booted right out of Google’s index. Like most things, enjoy in moderation.