keywords in link text

[ptstefa]

I am building a real estate site and i have many properties in it and i pull out the data from a database. So i have a page property.asp?cat=123123 which cat=123123 is the uniqye property from the database.

i am asking...is it good idea to make the links

property.asp?cat=123123&name=nice-property-in-california

the name=... is just for keywords in the addres bar the real link is property.asp?cat=123123.

I could be help me in search engine rank or it would be banned?

thanks in advance!

[incrediblehelp]

I tell clients to limit themselves to 2 variables in the URLs. In your case you really only have 1. I would not add the name thing in the URL as it will not help much.

[just-trying-to-help]

Unfortunately, I have a slightly different opinion on this one.


I tell clients to limit themselves to 2 variables in the URLs. In your case you really only have 1. I would not add the name thing in the URL as it will not help much.

If this was posted in the Google Forum, I would say it doesn't help at all but because we are talking about all the search engines, I believe it is proven that the keywords in the url DO help for Yahoo and MSN so if you are targeting traffic from Yahoo and MSN as well, then I would say go for it but keep the keywords short because if you cram in 50 keywords at the end then you will definately be hurting your rankings.

Ken

[incrediblehelp]

I guess the word "help" here is the issue. How much does it "help"? Does it help that much to even worry about it or should the person spend that time to get a few extra relevant backlinks that we all know does "help" in all three engines.

This is the great thing about SEO. It is essential the same recipe that we all kind of know how to cook, but each chef (SEOer) has his/her own way of cooking the same dish.

[ptstefa]

just-trying-to-help wrote:
If this was posted in the Google Forum, I would say it doesn't help

why you believe that, i think it will push it a little. Basically it will distinguish the urls othrwise all urls will seem like:
property.asp?cat=123123
property.asp?cat=12312
property.asp?cat=12314324
property.asp?cat=12342365

and this is bad as far as i know!!!

[parkoskar]

I think it is helpful for both Search Crawlers & Human being.. as they can see some text other than those big numbers...

[janeth]

I think it helps a lot on MSN.

[ptstefa]

janeth wrote:
I think it helps a lot on MSN.

Janeth why do you believe it especially in MSN?

[janeth]

janeth wrote:
I think it helps a lot on MSN.

Janeth why do you believe it especially in MSN?From the testing we have done and looking at the search results we have seen that it's a lot easer to rank on MSN if the keywords are in the URL.

[texxs]

I don't have a lot of time for a lng answer but something that everyone is missing in this wonderful concversation id that SE's don't read anything past the "?" in a url.


ASP has many many flaws (and sure some pluses) one of them being they don't play well with other technologies (it's a microsoft thing), SE's included. There's a complicated workaround, well complicated for ASP not for php. Tell your programmer to have the web app output a page with a name not a variable. with php on a non-MS server you can use something called mod-rewrite. MS doesn't have anything like that (does it?). so the only solution is to make permanent pages with real names and add dymnamic elements to them (instead of totally dynamic pages), but if you want a SE to index them they have to be available through links and without logging in.

Ack! I said a short answer!

gotta go now

[boxmonkey]

I moved to dynamic URLs a while ago for our site, and the variables I have are product and name. I set up the system so that if you go to just the product it does a 301 redirect to the product and name. It does the same thing if the name does not match the actual product name in case someone tries to do something tricky to mess up our stats.

This does seem to help Google somewhat. If I do a search for a product that we make, the name is bolded in the URL indicating that Google is recognizing it as a keyword. It hasn't done much for ranking, but it has helped Google recognize pages that weren't showing up before for those keywords.

[Dinghus]

The real thing to ask is "does it HURT your ranking?" If it doesn't get you banned then it can't hurt to try it and see what happens.

Remember, SEO is wide open. Everybody and nobody is an expert. I think the people who write the algos are surprised sometimes by what works to get high rankings or drop you off the list totally.

[texxs]

This does seem to help Google somewhat. If I do a search for a product that we make, the name is bolded in the URL indicating that Google is recognizing it as a keyword. It hasn't done much for ranking, but it has helped Google recognize pages that weren't showing up before for those keywords. Was the bolded part after the "?" in the url? Maybe I have old info . . .

[ptstefa]

texxs...
Was the bolded part after the "?" in the url? Maybe I have old info . . .

yes text after ? was bold!!! i made a search after your notice, for "villas in crete" and i found...

....(i don't want to promote)...com/hotel.php?HID=20060601115815257238&hn=Miramare%20Luxury%20Villas%20(Crete)

of course not #1 but google index this 2 words...

As far mod rewrite i know about this is good but not the only key to success.
Google say one or two variables after ? is good and can be index
but not id=... preferable category_id=
and after = have different values not only cat=23223
cat=32434
but distinguish words
cat=villas-in-crete
cat=property-on-crete
... and so on

[RegDCP]

Using mod-rewrite can help by changing the dynamically generated URL string into words, but it is not necessary if your content management system allows for the addition of unique meta tags on your products.

The CRELoaded CMS, (PHP/MySQL), does this and listings show that the meta tags are used and all products in the database are indexed.

Reg

[edhan]

of course not #1 but google index this 2 words...

As far mod rewrite i know about this is good but not the only key to success.
Google say one or two variables after ? is good and can be index
but not id=... preferable category_id=
and after = have different values not only cat=23223
cat=32434
but distinguish words
cat=villas-in-crete
cat=property-on-crete
... and so on

Yes, I do agree that if using mod rewrite to cat=villas-in-crete instead of cat=123456 would be an added advantage to be searched.

[texxs]

yes text after ? was bold!!! i made a search after your notice, for "villas in crete" and i found...

Thanks for the info. I quess I missed google saying that they do that now. Have you tried other SE's?

I just tried the same search (with quotes) on yahoo and found a couple with the text in bold after the "?" . . .
It's good to see SE's adapting!

[pogung177]

Two parameter as long not to long values is still good on Google.