Google's Matt Cutts On Keywords In The URL

Google’s Matt Cutts On Keywords In The URL

Mar 18, 2009 at 9:34am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google’s Matt Cutts posted a recent video answering a question about the position of the keywords in the URL. The question asked, does the order of the words in the URL make an impact on one’s ranking at Google? Matt Cutts said one should not obsess about the order of the words but he said keywords in the URL “does help a little bit.”

I asked Matt if this means we should go back to our existing sites and change URLs without keywords to have keywords in them. Matt told me, “If you’ve got an existing solution that works for you, it’s not really worth going back to change your urls. It may worth considering when you’re doing a new site.”

I then asked Matt if all new sites should make sure to have keywords in the URL. Matt answered, “It makes sense if a) it’s easy for you to do in your content management system, and b) the keywords are useful and descriptive–definitely don’t overdo it.”

Here is the video, it is worth watching:

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | SEO: Domain Names & URLs

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

Connect with the author via: Email | Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn

Read before commenting! We welcome constructive comments and allow any that meet our common sense criteria. This means being respectful and polite to others. It means providing helpful information that contributes to a story or discussion. It means leaving links only that substantially add further to a discussion. Comments using foul language, being disrespectful to others or otherwise violating what we believe are common sense standards of discussion will be deleted. Comments may also be removed if they are posted from anonymous accounts. You can read more about our comments policy here.

http://www.planetc1.com/ chiropractic

“I really wouldn’t obsess about it in that level of detail.” is a common Matt Cutts answer. I think my next question for him will be… What one thing should webmasters be obsessive about? :)
http://www.accountantwebsmiths.co.uk leoludwig

@chiropractic: and his answer would be “Creating compelling, interesting, unique, link-worthy content for their website on a regular basis”.
http://www.accountantwebsmiths.co.uk leoludwig

On second thought, he probably wouldn’t mention “link-worthy”.
Every webmaster knows – or should know – that “compelling, interesting, unique content” automatically get links.
http://www.smallbizexpress.com shashikant

I completely agree with leoludwig, If you have unique content and static links on page that will help lot :)
http://SteveJohnston SteveJohnston

Why is it he ignores the role of these keywords in the anchor text of the links that these URLs may enjoy?! When the URL is used on its own as the anchor in an external link, these keywords, along with the phrases they do, or don’t make, depending on the word order, really come into play.
suingthedevil moviereview

why this post confused me. i didn’t understand properly what matt cutt saying. i just want to ask is keyword containing in URL helping a little bit in search results ranking. Like a web site want to promote themselves for this keyword “High pr directory submission list” and the url of this site is highprsubmissionlist.com

it involves high, pr, submission, list only missing word is “directory”. From my view and what i understand after listing and reading video and article this url may help a little but but not a major factor for get top ranking.

Is m right ??