Subdomains and "pretty" URLs - do they have any bearing on SEO? 2

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

I've got a meeting next week with our internal SEO guy, and a team of SEO guys who are coming over from the US office. Given that I'm contracting for a large multi-national ISP, I'd assume these guys know their salt.

However, some of the stuff they've been talking about is news to me... so I'm wondering if anyone can shed any light on the relevance these factors have on SEO.

Aside from well-structured markup, and good, relevant content - which we certainly have, and lots of links to the pages in question - which they have more of than I can ever dream of... they mentioned 3 things which they would like to concentrate on:

1. Subdomains.

Apparently, having "

http://www.domain.com/news/storyURL"

ranks a lot worse than having "news.domain.com/storyURL", and so we're jumping through hoops to put URL tricks in so that if the user visits the former example, they get the same page as if they visited the latter.

2. Pretty URLs.

Apparently, visiting "news.domain.com/david_beckham_scores_own_goal" or "news.domain.com/posh_spice_is_really_a_man" will score a lot more hightly than "news.domain.com/story.html?storyId=123", etc... so again, we're jumping through hoops to try and make this happen.

3. Meta keywords and description.

I've always been under the impression that for the last few years, these really don't have too much benefit if you do have well-structured markup and good content... But the SEO guy says that is still makes a difference. So yet again, we're jumping through hoops to make sure that the meta keywords and description for each news story actually reflect the story content.

So - my questions:

- Are these three factors relevant?
- Is there an order in which we should concentrate on these (are any given more weighting than the others)?
- Are meta keywords and descriptions really important if the content is sound?

Thanks!

Dan

Coedit Limited - Delivering standards compliant, accessible web solutions

[tt]Dan's Page [blue]@[/blue] Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/dan/

[/tt]

 

[Foamcow]

Well, I'm never sure when dealing with these 'experienced' people whether they are correct or just full of it.


Here are my [em]opinions[/em]

Point 1.
It's possible. The subdomain 'news' will be seen as a totally seperate domain. If you promote that domain effectively then it could rank more highly than putting the news on the 'general'

http://www subdomain.

This could be because the content is more concentrated on a specific topic as it were.

Point 2.
If you are talking Google (at least) then it can index pages with paramters in the URL. Don't have too many though.

If you break up words in the URL use '-' rather than '_'.
Having too many '-' *could*, according to some, be seen as a spam attempt.

Using SE Friendly URLs can help your users remember a URL. When you look at it that way, it's a good thing.


Point 3.
Tosh. The Description Meta may be used, but when you consider Google has an entire department dedicated to creating the algos that grab 'snippets' it's not worth losing sleep over.
However, it doesn't hurt to have a good description on the page and again, is good for the user.


Most important things for SEO.
Backlinks
Title Tags


Oh, and Posh Spice is a man.

<honk>*:O)</honk>
Designease Ltd. - polyprop folders, ring binders and creative presentation ideas
Earl & Thompson Marketing - Marketing Agency Services in Gloucestershire

 

[Foamcow]

regarding URLs
Google, for one, does look at the words in a URL but I don't think they pay much attention. They are like a 'bonus' point if you will.

When you think about it, anything that allows the page author some leeway in deceiving an SE is going to be taken with a pinch of salt when calculating rankings.

ie.
keyword metas - they aren't seen by the visitor
urls - they can say anything you like without affecting the page content

See what I mean?



<honk>*:O)</honk>
Designease Ltd. - polyprop folders, ring binders and creative presentation ideas
Earl & Thompson Marketing - Marketing Agency Services in Gloucestershire

 

[ChrisHirst]

Agree with all of those answers.

The only time "pretty URLs" do help with SE ranking is when someone places a link to the page and uses the URL/Pagename as the anchor text.

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES CHANGE URLs TO PRETTY ONES ON AN EXISTING WELL RANKED SITE !!! simply on a whim, unless you (or the client) is prepared to stand the 4 to 6 months loss of or disruption to ranking and traffic while all the redirects take effect.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

Thanks for the advice, guys... it's good to know that the SEO people here aren't just toying with us!

No danger on re-vamping existing links, Chris... this is a new site to be pushed out to countries with no localised web presence at present (localised to each country).

Both the news stories and the URLs to them will all be localised too, as will the names of the sub-domains (so "news.domain.com" would be "nieuws.domain.com" for the Dutch version of the site. This will presumably make the links more relevant for searches in each country's natural language... which is nice.

Anyway - now we also have to localise the URLs from the default English for each version of the site, too (so instead of "terms.html", "privacy.html", "contact.html", etc, we have the URLs translated).

I'm not entirely sure how much benefit that change will give us, so it might be more about giving the immpression [to the readers] that each country had some hand in getting their own site up and running (when all have been delivered by the same JSPs created in an office in Hammersmith). OK - so I'm a cynic ;-)

Dan

Coedit Limited - Delivering standards compliant, accessible web solutions

[tt]Dan's Page [blue]@[/blue] Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/dan/

[/tt]