| One of the simplest methods to improve your search | | | | Slazenger and work towards optimising for sales of |
| engine optimization is to look at the way you name | | | | that brand. Maybe your research shows that most |
| your files. | | | | people are using the phrase "tennis ball shop" so you |
| Keywords in file names are a good thing. Don't call | | | | should optimize for those keywords. Or you might |
| your webpages names like "services.html" or | | | | consider working towards a local geographical niche, |
| "products.html" actually use your keywords. Here is an | | | | like "tennis balls Bahamas" or your home town or state. |
| example for you. | | | | Remember you don't have to get things right the first |
| Let's say you sell tennis balls online and you have three | | | | time. Do some keyword research, choose some |
| brands available, Slazenger, Wimbledon and Wilson | | | | keywords and then test to see how high up you can |
| and your webstore is at [ | | | | get your pages to rank for certain key phrases. If |
| A mistake would be to call your sales page something | | | | those phrases don't bring in traffic keep testing until |
| like this | | | | you find a combination that works. Remember though |
| [ | | | | that file names are only a small part of the overall |
| [ | | | | SEO process and if you only optimize your file names |
| [ | | | | and not the on-page copy, the incoming links, your |
| This just tells search engines that you sell products! | | | | internal site structure etc. etc, your efforts in file name |
| What you want to do is use the keywords for the | | | | design will have little impact. |
| main search terms you want that page to show up | | | | How To Structure Long File Names |
| for in search engines. Something like this would be | | | | Dashes make for better file naming - at least that's |
| better. | | | | what research in Google has demonstrated. |
| [ | | | | When I say dashes it's like this - |
| [ | | | | [ opposed to this - |
| [ | | | | [ |
| Note that it would also be a good idea to have a | | | | I have been structuring my files with dashes for a long |
| tennis balls homepage that links to all those pages but | | | | time now. I made this decision not only for SEO |
| focuses on the keyword tennis balls only. Something | | | | purposes but for human navigation too. Many people |
| like: | | | | don't know what an underscore is and even have |
| [ | | | | trouble finding it on their keyboard. Dashes look clearer |
| Conduct Keyword Research | | | | on screen and act as a good divider for keywords. |
| Now remember you probably face a bit of competition | | | | The only thing to be careful with is to not go over |
| for the keywords "tennis balls" since globally you might | | | | board with file names. Don't do this - |
| have a few competitors also selling online. You should | | | | [ |
| conduct some keyword research first and determine | | | | Clearly this is just silly. You are diluting your keywords, |
| which phrases you want to work towards optimizing | | | | creating a page that is next to impossible to remember |
| for. | | | | or type in manually and are certainly not helping your |
| You might notice there is little competition for | | | | search engine optimization. |