Permalink problem

[Ryan]

I changed my permalinks some time back, but not for SEO. I just, aesthetically, didn't like seeing "index.php" in the middle of the permalink.

Icky. I hate seeing index.php in links. That and whacking .html onto the end of everything, especially when I know they're actually adding it on there with modrewrite rather them actually being static .html files sitting on the server.

make sure your permalinks make some sort of logical sense (ie: aren't some demented, convoluted mess)

Having .php, .html etc. in the permalinks fits into the "not making logical sense" bracket for me.

[chipbennett]

Oh, I see. I totally misunderstood then.

I've never heard of that before.

Do you know what the reasoning was?

I guess I don't understand why a search engine would care. As long as the link text is relevant, how does proximity to the base domain name matter?

[andrea_r]

Something about diluting the URL, I think. Just google permalinks & seo and every post on the page talks about using postname r category/postname. Nobody mentions any down sides.

Though with the recent news that speed is a factor, won't be hard convincing people to not use just /%postname%/ if they have a lot of pages too.

I did eventually find one post that specifically stated why:
http://www.freeseoarticles.net/optim...ink-structure/

Apparently the closer leftwards, it has more wieght. I'd say overall the effect is probably marginal, just based on my own experiences.

I have also had clients go absolutely nuts over stuff like this, wanting to do "everything they can" SEO-wise to edge out their competition.

If only they spent the time on wirting good posts instead. ;)

[Ryan]

That article just refers to keyword density, nothing about the /%postname%/ Needing to be closer to the domain name in URL. In which case they're correct, keyword density is beneficial SEO wise. There's no point in having a bunch of unrelated words in there (unless you are stuck in this weird performance situation that WordPress seems to be in).

[Otto]

Google doesn't give a shit about keywords in the URL. They're looking at content. URL is just an identifier. Don't believe me though, go ask Matt Cutts.

[chipbennett]

Google doesn't [care] about keywords in the URL. They're looking at content. URL is just an identifier. Don't believe me though, go ask Matt Cutts.

See, that's what I would think, intuitively. So, I would trust that you're right on this one. Perhaps relevance and "dilution" of the URL factors in somewhere, but overall, it really can't be all that important, relative to page content.

[andrea_r]

Hey, I don't really care either, I just have to deal with clients who insist I implement some of these bad ideas because an SEO expert told them to. :D

[Ryan]

Google doesn't give a shit about keywords in the URL. They're looking at content. URL is just an identifier. Don't believe me though, go ask Matt Cutts.

No said they did. Google doesn't need to care about something for it to be beneficial SEO wise. And anyhows, I'm pretty sure (not 100%, but fairly certain) that Matt Cutts has described keywords in URL's as being of lower importance than on-page content, not that that it is not used within their ranking algorithm at all.

[Ryan]

Video from the man himself discussing this topic, including the keyword ordering issues that Andrea mentioned.

From the video it sounds like Andrea's SEO fanatical clients are correct in that the keyword order does have an effect. He didn't state that explicitly, but the fact that he didn't outright say it wasn't a factor implies to me that they must be factoring that in somewhere in their algorithm albeit obviously not in a way that makes it worth bothering to optomise for in most situations.