I am redoing part of how my site works and I'm going to include mod_rewrite so that more of my content gets into Google. Here is a rough example of how things currently work:

view.php?tID=212&uID=1010

Before I use mod_rewrite, I was wondering if I should rename my .php page so that it contains keywords related to my site, like this:

essentialOils.php?tID=212&uID=1010

Afte mod_rewrite, it will look similar to:

essentialoils/212/1010

If this is a good idea, should I be using a space between the two words?

Thanks!

ya it is helpful

Busboy,

Generally keywords in URL are a great benefit. But.

I warn you against using the whole word essentialoils as part of URLs. It is no bad but definitely no good either. This word is nonsense to Google, except for the case you suppose people to type 'essentialoils' in search boxes. But people will mostly search TWO SEPARATE WORDS, won't they?

So here are your solutions:

essential-oils.php/210
essential-oils/210/
essential/oils/210

I hope you get the idea

There's no definite answer pro or against submitting too many URLs that appear static and contain same keywords. If you can, you definitely should differentiate your URLs by using other keywords, even if they are just bells and whistles ingored by the scripts:

essential-oils/210/oil-name-1
essential-oils/210/oil-name-2
...

Your scripts ignore these excessive parameters but Googlebot doesn't.

Hope it helps.

Umm, not quite. I offer this Google search for "website button". Look at the URLs and domain names and see what's been bolded by Google. Notice anything? The word "button" is picked up by Google quite well. In particular, notice the following results:

www.buttongenerator.com (button is in bold)
www.freebuttons.com (button is in bold)
www.aaa-buttons.com (button is in bold)
ekstreme.com/buttonmaker (button is in bold)

Now search for "website button maker", and see how the last result (from ekstreme.com) comes out as: both words are bolded.

By that same token, "essentialoils" will be detected as "essential oils". Of course, if you are in doubt, just use a dash.

Ekstreme,

this is a common mistake to think Google considers exactly what it highlights. Our company conducted an entire SEO research as to what characters Google and other engines consider delimiters. The results are as follows: hyphen "-" is a delimiter for every engine, underscore "_" is a delimiter for Yahoo and MSN. I can attach here other results of that research if you wish.

After pulling out the results from the database, Google just highlights every string match in the snippet. It's wrong to think this is a part of their ranking algorithm. It's just a matter of display.

I have had little problems getting "fused" keywords ranking well (top 10). Dashed and fused keywords are equivalent from my experience. Of note, I should have qualified my previous post as based solely on my experience. If I'm wrong, I stand corrected.

As for delimiters, yes, the dash is the universal delimiter. No quibbles there. My only concern is that making people type the dash, or to make them remember there is a dash in the URL might prove futile. Personally, I find typing "essentialoils" easier than "essential-oils", but that could be a personal quirk

Well, the numbers won't do you a heck of a lot of good but if you can get keywords it is beneficial. It helps the SE's pick out your keywords plus it makes other webmasters more likely to use your keywords in the anchor text of links to your site.

Keyword in the URL is a definite plus. It will give you more of a boost for sure. The shorter your URL as well the better.

Before I submit my URLs to google for the Sitemap project I want to make sure I get this right. Which of the following two options would be best to go with?

domain.com/essentialoils/210
domain.com/essential/oils/210

Will google be suspicious if every single URL I give them (over 900) all have essential oils in the URL? Will they see that as me trying to manipulate their system with excessive use of keywords?

Thanks

I doubt it would be an issue. Worst case scenario is you get no benefit from it directly. But having the keywords in the URLs will help with users identifying your pages and encourage people to link using good anchor text.

What's product 210? Or 209 for that matter? Let's take a different example: Suppose you sell olive oil, corn oil, beef meat, and lamb meat. A good way to divide up your site would be:

/oil/olive
/oil/corn
/meat/beef
/meat/lamb

So to answer your question: if you have 210 types of essential oils, then /essentialoil/1 through /essentialoil/210 is OK. Ideally, I would have the names of the oils, maybe a brand name instead of the number: more keywords!

As for manipulation, others will be able to help you more with this, but if the URL is relevant to its contents, then it's OK.

Hope this helps.

No one has answered if I should use:

essentialoils/210

or

essential/oil/210

By the way, these numbers do not refer to product numbers. These numbers would pull up testimonials in the database. There are over 900 in the database now, each of them talking about one oil or another.

essentialoils/210

essentialoils/210 definitely the slash in the domain means directory, in your case you want that to be a keyword.