Should I use keywords in all my URLs?
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I couldn't find anything online that really covers my exact question.
If I wanted to change my home page URL, (currently along the lines of "http://example.com/home") would it be a good idea to change it to "http://example.com/dallas-auto-repair"?
Then on the "services page" I might change the URL to "http://example.com/dallas-auto-services".
Pages like the contact page would probably remain simply "example.com/contact"
Theoretically by putting my main keywords right there in the URL, I would imagine that I could get moved up in the SERPs. Am I wrong?
So if this is a bad idea, please let me know why.
If this is a good idea, do you have any articles or references that cover this, or even personal experience?
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"If I wanted to change my home page URL, (currently along the lines of "http://example.com/home") would it be a good idea to change it to "http://example.com/dallas-auto-repair"?"
I have to say no to this particular example. Realistically, your home page probably shouldn't sit on an internal URL like this anyway; is there a reason why the home page is not sitting on the root?
If you were to follow this exact example, it sounds like your home page targets "Dallas auto repair", but that there is an internal page targeting "Dallas auto services" as well, which sounds like a good recipe for having internal pages compete against each other for the same type of rankings.
We advise caution when implementing redirects: if there is no good reason besides "this would get a keyword into the URL", it's usually not a great idea. If you need to change the URL for a number of reasons, putting keywords in the new URL is a good idea. Say you have long, complicated dynamic URLs that a CMS has created: you'd be best to make these static URLs for a number of reasons. However, if you have a URL like www.example.com/auto-repair-services, I would definitely not 301 redirect that to www.example.com/dallas-auto-repair-services just to get the word "Dallas" in there, for example.
301 redirects sometimes don't seem to transfer the exact authority / rankings from one URL to another, so unless there is a very good reason to go through redirects, I would not do it.
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What Robert said is quite correct. However, I wanted to expand a little bit upon; "Make sure any url change takes into accounts links, etc."
If a page has some really good links, and it's receiving a lot of traffic - it's necessary to redirect the old URL to the new URL. Otherwise you'll lose traffic wherever the old URL is linked, such as local directories. I'm not sure what type of server you're using, so I can't comment on how you would handle that.
In order to find inbound links to the pages you would like to change, you would need Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, Moz Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO and/or aHrefs. Whether or not you use anything listed after Bing Webmaster Tools is up to you, but it's highly recommended should your budget cover the cost. I believe Moz Open Site Explorer is free to a point.
The point is to get all of the link data possible, because one source is generally inadequate.
So, as Robert said, use caution when you make these changes.
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Marshall_Motors
You have a question of would it be a good idea? To which I would say, yes it would. I would caution not trying to go overboard and I would caution that if you are already ranking well (that is subjective to you) to be very careful. Make sure any url change takes into accounts links, etc.
But, you also state: A "...by putting my main keywords right there in the URL, I would imagine that..." B "... I could get moved up in the SERPs."" Am I wrong?" For this you are drawing a huge conclusion that A would equal B. IMO this is one of the biggest mistakes we make in SEO - we attribute too much to one factor. KW's in a URL are a factor in SEO ranking. What is the value of that factor? 1%? 10%? or .0001%
All you can do is test it out for your site in your vertical and see what happens. We like to tell our clients that SEO is a 100% game and we never attain that 100% which would be perfect SEO. There are many reasons and often they are business reasons that overshadow the SEO reasons. What we try to do is get as close to the holy grail of 100% as possible for a given page.
Hope this helps,
Robert
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