I need some advice on naming directory/pages please

[JohnnyR]

So, up until recently I was doing my structure like this:
domain.com/sites/023/1/gallery1.htm

Altough it has its advantages helping me to keep things organized, it occured to me it's a waist. So instead, if on that page is a hot brunette, I was thinking of doing:

domain.com/free-video-sites/hot-brunette-chick/sexy-darkhaired-slut/nasty-brunettes-gallery1.htm

Do you think anyone should mind? As long as I follow their rules on index naming and directory structure?

Also, what should I use? Should I put the mentioned hyphens, or is it better to use underscore? Or maybe none? And please explain to me what's the difference.

I read some talk about google wanting to get rid of the hyphened domains bc of spam related issues, so I wouldn't wanna be on that side when/if it happens - I think it was refering to domain names with more then 2 hyphens in them, I'm not sure if that was only the domain name or the whole URL.

Thanks

[JohnnyR]

it has been brought to my attention that the url i supplied as an example is a bit extreme (thx mryum). I'm not planning to use a url THAT long, but you guys get the picture anyway, right?

sooo... no help?

[Greenguy]

I don't know much, but I do know that's too many keywords to worry about - LOL

Just concentrate on 3 or 4 keywords. A lot of people use the http://www.domain.com/three-key-words/ or http://www.domain.com/three_key_words/ but I have no idea if either is better/worse than the other.

[Fido]

Better (from SEO point of view) is to use hyphens. SEs (Google, but probably also the others) see sexy-brunette correctly as two words and sexy_brunette they see as one word.

[natalie]

I have been told by my seo to not use either - or _

[Maj. Stress]

I have tried both ways. Using keywords and just using index, main, gallery and gallery1. I have seen zero difference in the serps. Your mileage may vary

[Maj. Stress]

I forgot to add, that I have tried both ways with the actual directory structure with no noticable difference.

[Fido]

Do search at specialized SEO boards, hyphens are the way to go. Or do your own research. Searching Google for, lets say, sexy brunette keyword in anchors http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...Asexy+brunette gives you only urls with hyphens (at least at top 100 positions) and none separated by underscore or not separated.

[natalie]

And then try http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...3Asexybrunette
Of cos this doesnt prove what I said but your search doesnt dissprove it either.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by natalie

And then try http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...3Asexybrunette
Of cos this doesnt prove what I said but your search doesnt dissprove it either.

Natalie why would someone search for sexybrunette without space?

[Fido]

Just a little clarification, allinurl: command returns only those results, where URL of the page contains searched keyword. So if you search for allinanchor:sexy brunette, Goolge will return URLs containing sexy brunette and most of them (if not all) on the top positions are URLs, where these two words sexy and brunette are separated by hyphen. Natalie notice, that I did not search for sexy-brunette, but for sexy brunette, such as a normal surfer does and Google itself decided, that URLS with hyphens are most appropriate to my search.

Not separated words sounds to me like the worst version of URL.

Insider's opinion:

Originally Posted by GoogleGuy

If you use an underscore '_' character, then Google will combine the two words on either side into one word. So bla.com/kw1_kw2.html wouldn't show up by itself for kw1 or kw2. You'd have to search for kw1_kw2 as a query term to bring up that page.

[natalie]

That quote is from Apr 22, 2004... in seo thats ancient

And I just checked why my seo told me that, its because google doesnt differentiate between all 3 anymore. The reason I was advised that is that theres a possibility down the track they will see hyphens and underscores as spammy.

I did a check on same keyword phrases and the about same amount of all 3 variations came up. Funny enough one of my number fours for a good keyword has _ in the url.

I am not trying to argue about this.. why? Cos I don't give a flying fuck what anyone else does in thier seo, in fact I would prefer they don't do what I do. I am happy with my rankings.

[Linkster]

natalie - not gonna argue with ya cause I agree that everyone is welcome to try what they like
However - in all of the actual controlled tests where the keywords were not on the page (that would introduce false positives) and in the links to the page (again a false positive) and only the url contained the words, in all cases the dash separated keywords ranked for the phrase typed in as a search of the two words, wheras the underscore did not show up for the phrase.(It did show up for the two words combined into one word)
I would also agree that Google's engine has not been changed to recognize the underscore yet - although I believe Y and MS have. Its just a difference of the way the programmers like things at Google.

The other problem is that in the last year, some variations have been added to the algorithm to separate combined words if(and they are getting better at it) the words are commonly used words recognized by Google. This adds the secondary effect that if you use an underscore, the algo sees the words combined as one, but then if they are common words they get separated again

Of course in all of the testing we've tried, the url has so little to do with the ranking of the page vs. using keywords and other on-page and link factors - they way outweigh anything in the URL - and that can be seen on any search done in Google for a two or more word phrase - assuming that you see pages with keyword URLs I would be willing to bet that they are doing just as well as pages without

[Linkster]

Also - in reference to the originals posters idea - note the way Greenguy wrote the URLs - there is another benefit to having the url only go one directory deep - and that is probably more important than most other things you do in the url

[Surfn]

These days my sites look like " mysite.com/google-sucks/yahoo-rulz/index.html"

[Useless]

Originally Posted by Surfn

These days my sites look like " mysite.com/google-sucks/yahoo-rulz/index.html"

I've found this works out pretty good too: domain.com/greenguys/link-o-rama/dangerdave/tommy.htm.

[Head Boy]

Has anyone tried single words with a two deep directory structure - eg

www.anyurl.com/sexy/brunette/ or maybe www.anyurl.com/sexy/brunette.html

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

Has anyone tried single words with a two deep directory structure - eg

www.anyurl.com/sexy/brunette/ or maybe www.anyurl.com/sexy/brunette.html

Yeah, this is another good way, SEs understand slash to be a word separator, but such an URLs are harder to maintain, because keywords usually differ in word lenght.

[JohnnyR]

Thanks everybody for the great info you posted here. Helped me out bunch

Ta