Everybody talks about meta tags, keywords, good title names and how they can increase page rankings, etc. But I was wondering whether the page name itself holds any value in indexing.

Yes, I am talking about the web page file names (some-thing.html) NOT the one which you put in title tags. I am going to express my views and want to know what you think is correct. I have seen pages named in various ways like these:

1) my_web_page.html
2) DoYouLikeMyPage.html
3) hey-see-my-webpage.html (I think this way is more appropriate)
4) this.is.a.page.html (somewhat confusing)
5) I dont know.html (I don't really know if this type of naming is possible or correct)

1) my_web_page.html: It seems to be the most favourite way for webmasters. I think it is used mainly because in olden days the server allowed only alphanumerical characters and "_" to name pages. But nowadays it is not a problem.

I personally prefer "-" rather than "_" for spacing, because most search engine think "-" to be a word separation. What I mean is that when you name something like my_page.html the combination "my_page" is taken as whole word but not in the other case. But when it comes to search engines like yahoo and google they might already have set "_" for a space.

2) DoYouLikeMyPage.html: I opt strict no no for this type. First of all it makes reading the name difficult and also doesnt please the search engines.

3) hey-see-my-webpage.html: This is what I have been using all these days. It is clearer to read (but who reads page names???) and for the search engines.

4) this.is.a.page.html: Using full stops does make way for separating words but I am not sure about it. The only problem is in reading them, I some times confuse the last words with extensions (I have set to show extensions in my windows), otherwise its perfectly ok with me.

And there might be still other popular ways for naming. I want you to joing along the post if you know them.

What about Content Management Systems???

Edit: Sorry electriic ink, I was referring to the title when I was saying "This one really uses naming badly". Edited for future misunderstanding by readers.

I have seen almost all php cms (I only use php you know) using either random characters or numerals as per databse table for naming webpages. Worst some cms don't even put meta tags/keywords/description and even worseare some which puts the same title throughout its pages. This takes my topic to end as almost all good sites are using cms and now I am starting to feel that file names hold no value.

But one use I know of good naming is that it brings relief to users who bookmark pages and after somedays when they really need them they have to literally open each of the bookmarks to find it.



This post has been edited by nitish: Jul 24 2008, 12:19 PM

But they do. Why do you think all topics in this forum are given a name in the following format..

http://www.trap17.com/forums/naming-web-page-files-t59645.html

... rather than just ...

http://www.trap17.com/forums/?showtopic=59645

... as the case is with most forums. The answer is because URLs matter and this helps trap17 move up in the search engine's results list. Google "naming web page files trap17" and parts of the URL will be bold, indicating that Google has used the URL as part of the search criteria.

I never knew that Google used the file names and URL to help when it indexes pages. I normally just keep my pages short as possible and try to make them just one word so that they were easier to organize and also more manageable when writing links to something. Now though I might make the names a little longer as like a three word description for the page or something that would help. I guess that explains why sites with domain masking do not work very well either as every page is of the same name.

I was under the impression the meta tag & keywords was used for search engines, I too was unaware that they used the actual page name. With regard to CMS not using meta tag & keywords that is down to the site owner. If you have used CMS before you will know that the system section in the admin panel of most CMS is where the site owner is meant to insert this information for access to the main site or index page. When publishing a new content page on the site there is also places in the properties of the document to add the information too. My guess is any CMS you have seen without the keywords & meta tag information has been set up by someone who doesn't know where it is or doesn't know what it is even. I cannot imagine that anyone who is experiencedenough to put a site up would deliberately not index his/her site. Just my thoughts on the matter

it's also why trap will insist on a relevant topic name.

the bigger search engines now don't need a seperator to find key words in a string though but all in all i would use a seperator if the file contains more than one word only because some search engines stil will not sort through the string.

alot of debate over this issue inthe past if keywords in a file name helps get better rankings. personally, i believe they do. if they do, they can't hurt. i've read many articles though saying they don't help. i believe that these articles are false and try to teach a webmaster something that wont work so that the ones that wrote the article will recieve better results. i've never tested this theory but i say, if you know it wont hurt you, DO IT just in case

oh btw- same debate is going on for keywords in a domain name. some feel it's irrelevant. some feel it is. go figure. better safe than sorry i believe....but now it's starting to get off topic....

electriic ink, I really couldn't believe that this page was indexed in just one day.
And that quote, I wasn't talking about this forum, but was talking about cms in general.

Thanks a lot for your reply, I was almost abolishing the idea of giving neat names to files. And to point out search users will be more attracted to clean names (I myself was when I looked at those two at the top) rather than some cryp
tic code urls.

I saw a few articles on this but your url is a giant keyword database as well, because odds are there will be a combination of those words in your content which will really help out in getting your website index quicker.



You can say that google has pretty much rewritten the rules on search engine results because the programming they did, but some argue that google has ruin search industry because of what a person must do in order to get to the top of the search results. However, I do like the dash method because when I do research papers the urls alone tell me what I need to know and if it is usable or not when written my papers.

1) my_web_page.html
2) DoYouLikeMyPage.html
3) hey-see-my-webpage.html (I think this way is more appropriate)
4) this.is.a.page.html (somewhat confusing)
5) I dont know.html (I don't really know if this type of naming is possible or correct)

You can use 1 to 4. 5 isn't recognised partially
because search engines hate any web spaces
which sometimes they turn them into something
like I%20dont%20know.html which gives
visitors a 404 page not found message.

And you can take away useless words like "the",
is", "are", "was", "here", "there", and similiar
from names of your htm document.

CMS? Explore wordpress.org There's a plugin
that automatically renames your page/post
titles with search-engine-optimised titles.

This post has been edited by wordpress_lover: Jul 26 2008, 03:46 PM