Keywords within the URL itself can be given extra relevancy by some search engines. Therefore, it pays to create pages on your Web site that include keywords within the name of the page itself.

Example:

<A HREF="my-url-keyword-here.htm">My Link Text Here</A> <BR>

Consider separating keywords in page names by dashes or underscores. Some optimization experts believe that in the event that an engine chooses to parse the words of a URL into separate keywords, that they would look for dashes as separators. However, most engines are not likely to expend the extra CPU power to parse the words and instead would simply check for the presence of the keyword in the URL. Therefore, the Page Critic currently only checks for the presence of a keyword in the URL and also does not attempt to count "words" in a URL.

Mailto tags are also considered to be hyperlinks by the Page Critic and thereby will count keywords in your mailto tag toward your total frequency. Do not be overly concerned whether keywords in your mailto tags inflate your frequency beyond the Page Critic recommendation. An engine is unlikely to penalize you for spamming by having too many keywords in the URL or Mailto area.

Hyphens in your domain name to separate keywords are suggested by some optimization experts in case an engine wants to try to parse the domain name into separate words. In this scenario, the hyphens may offer a slight advantage. However, including or excluding hyphens is unlikely to have an affect on your ranking and thereby should not override your personal marketing preferences.

If your keyword frequency for the URL is higher than the average top ranking page because of a larger number of hyperlinks on your page that happen to include the keyword, do not worry about being penalized for spamming. In many cases, it is not avoidable to have a high keyword frequency in the URL area, due to the natural structure of your web site.

QUICK TIPS:

?If generating or creating an optimized page, always create one or more hyper links to another page found on your site that includes more detail about the keyword topic.

?Creating page names which include your keyword such as blue-widgets.htm can help increase relevance on some engines. Most generally do not care what you name a page, but naming them based on the keyword you are targeting won't hurt.

?Avoid numbering your pages as index1.html, index2.html, etc. This can "red flag" you to the search engines or your competitors, and implies you are making lots of copies of your home page even if the content of each page is entirely different. It's again better to name the page based on the keyword and maybe a couple letters to remind yourself what engine you're targeting, like "av" for AltaVista. For example, widgets_av.htm.

?The visible text portion of a link should always include your keywords when possible.

Advanced Formatting/Linking Tip: Infoseek recently started discouraging the practice of creating a "bridge" page whose sole purpose is to link to another page. In reality, nearly all pages on the Web link to other pages. Therefore, this little known policy is very ambiguous and subject to much interpretation.

If you wish to "cover your bases" when creating pages designed to rank well, we recommend creating or updating pages using the rules we've defined in this help file and the advice of the Page Critic. In addition, when creating new pages to your site designed to rank well, try to use a similar visual style to other pages on your site when you have the extra time to do so. That way the page will look less like a generic "doorway" or "bridge" to your home page, and more like an integrated part of your Web site. When the page contributes content to a site, it cannot possibly be discounted simply as a bridge page that does not add any value to a search engine's database.

One way to accomplish this goal is to use the same or similar menu structure used on the rest of your site and provide links to other areas besides just your home page. Provide real and useful content on your doorway page, not just advertising "fluff." Use similar company logos, graphics, and colors on the doorway page that you use elsewhere on your Web site. Also try to link to your doorway pages from at least one other page on your site that the search engine is sure to come across.

In addition, avoid the practice of making many mirror copies of your home page and then simply changing some of the keywords and meta tags. Search engines dislike pages that are extremely similar in content, particularly if a single search brings up 5 copies of basically the same content. That can red flag you to the engine as a "spammer" even if you do it unintentionally. In addition, avoid numbering your pages such as index1.html, index2.html, etc.

It's difficult for search engines to "automatically" detect most of these things and most do not even attempt to. However, if a competitor of yours complains to a search engine that you are abusing the system and the search engine actually follows up with the complaint (generally a rare event), then structuring the look of your pages properly will defuse any argument they might make. There is certainly nothing wrong with making your pages "search engine friendly", so long as you are honest about the keywords you use to describe the content of your site, and play within the "rules".