Search Engine Rank: Folders and Files

Where a page is listed in search engine results is no accident. The ranking is a direct consequence of web site design decisions made long before the site is published. To achieve the best ranking, you, as a marketer or PR specialist, need to get involved early. One area that will return particularly good results is the naming of folders and files.

Folder and file names are very important for one reason: they appear in the URL, or web page address. Search engines, and Google in particular, give higher weighting to pages that have search keywords in the URL. You are probably are already loading your pages with keywords in the visible text. The URL is perhaps even more important.

Web designers do not often think about search engine optimization or page rank. They consider filenames only in the context of organizing the pages and making navigation easier. Their concerns are mostly technical, with some consideration of the usability.

To improve page positions in search results you need to inject keywords into the naming process. Start talking to the web designers as soon as the project is defined. Have your list of keywords ready and make it clear that you want the keywords used for folder and filenames as often as possible. Review the first pass and insist on changes that will add more keywords.

Single keywords are easy – just use the word for a file or folder name. When a keyword or tag contains multiple words, the naming is a bit more complicated. Spaces are not allowed in the URL. Your choices are threefold:

From a search engine perspective, the first option is functional but probably not optimal. A search on a single word will return a match if that word appears in a seemingly longer word. For example, a search for people could match purplepeopleeaters. My big objection to this compound word technique is its lack of readability. I much prefer a separator between words.

Google appears to treat dashes and underscores about the same. I can find no obvious bias that favors one over the other. Personally, I prefer dashes – I think they look better. You can also use dashes in domain names, whereas underscores are not allowed. For consistency and a better-looking URL, I prefer to use all dashes for compound names.

The main point to remember is to use important keywords to name your domain, folders and files. Construct a folder tree with single keywords. Use compound words, with dash separators, for filenames. If your page titles are rich with keywords, consider using them for the filenames. If your pages are database-driven, use keywords for parameter values.

If you apply these techniques to your web pages, you will see a clear improvement in your ranking with the search engines. This is an easy method that pays very high dividends in terms of new visitors and sales.

These methods are used by both Helioza.com and LeNeuz.com. Helioza is an article publishing site that pays writers half the ad revenue earned by each contributed page, such as this article. Le Neuz is a press release distribution site for businesses. Check out both sites to see these techniques in action.