URL Structure: When to insert keywords?

[pharcydeabc]

I read the SEOmoz beginers guide and it said that it's beneficial to place keywords in the URL as long as you don't overdo it.  However, this seems awkward for common pages, such as "Home", "About", "Contact" etc....

I've currently targeted a specific keyword for each page on my site, as follows:

Home: "Green Screen"

Work: "Greenscreen"

About: "Event Photography"

Pricing: "Green Screen Photography"

Should I rename the URLs as:

Home: ...com/green-screen-home.html

Work: ...com/greenscreen-work.html

About:...com/about-event-photography.html

Pricing:...com/green-screen-photography-pricing.html

[tam_pearseconsulting.com]

By a blog do you mean on your site or an external one?

If it were me I would make sure this content resides on my website but would not care so much about the delivery system as long as it is indexable.

Your username makes me want to go download Labcabincalifornia

[Copstead]

Link Building is difficult, but the reward for SEO is the best.

Here are a few good Local Link Building Articles:

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building
• http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professional-guide-to-link-building-2011
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-complete-guide-to-link-building-with-local-events

[pharcydeabc]

OK, I'll take that into consideration.  I run a photo booth website and had tried to build links for that, but I found it so difficult.  In the end I just created a lot of citations in yellowpages, merchant circle, gig masters, yahoo local, google local, linkedin, flickr, wedding wire, the knot, etc....  Are these the type of links that you're talking about or are you referring more to links from wedding blogs, other businesses, event venues, etc...?

[Copstead]

I wouldn't put those extra keywords in the url structure.  I also wouldn't create individual contact pages for each location, unless all of the content on the page is unique.

A rule of thumb when creating pages is that each new page should be so unique or informative that people will want to link to it.

Since you have a small site, instead of focusing on the url structures, focus on your local link building.  Link building is going to provide you so much more then spreading information  out with new pages.

Focus building the site for your users' experience.

Here is my recommendation for your site structure.

• www.liveimagegreenscreen.com
• www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/about/
• www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/services/
• www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/what-is-green-screen/
• www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/portfolio/ (instead of work)
• www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/pricing/
• www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/contact/
• www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/blog/

Take some time and look at your competitors and see what different pages they have.  Keep your site simple and professional, and focus on building quality relevant links to it.

[pharcydeabc]

H1&H2, got it!  Thanks for catching the Jeremytech.com links.  I'm using a template and didn't even notice that.

Yeah, I'm going to build out more pages.  On my pricing page I have a number of options geared towards event marketing customers.  I might create a "Learn More" link next to each option, which would link to a new page that goes in more depth about that option.

Also as you had suggested, a "Green Screen 101" type of page would be both informative and help to create content for my website.  However, I'm not sure where I would put a link to pages such as these, because they are really secondary information and shouldn't be included in the top menu bar.  Is it best to put a link at the footer of my homepage for these type of pages or is there another place that the link should be placed.

What is the benefits/drawbacks of creating web pages for this informative content vs. creating a blog and making them articles in the blog?

[pharcydeabc]

Very helpful, I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions so thoroughly!

[pharcydeabc]

Thanks Brent,

The site is still under construction, so I'm going to be adding a contact page for each location that we serve, "San Francisco", "Los Angeles", "San Diego", "Orange County" and will be using a unique street address, email, and phone # for each location.  Since "Green Screen" is already part of my URL, would you advise against naming each page: http://www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/SanFranciscoGreenScreen.com, etc..., because of redundancy?

Also, thanks for the canonicalization tip.  I had no clue about that.

[tam_pearseconsulting.com]

It doesn't appear that you are Jeremytech.com and you might want to tell him to stop linking to himself via your address in your footer.

You also have quite a few links onpage to rev-1 and OG versions of pages while having links to the finalized pages.  http://www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/la-contact-rev1.html and http://www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/work-og.html  are examples of what I mean.

The email address for contact is a jeremytech.com email address.

I know you are mid development but that kind of stuff can be forgotten.

I would suggest

Wrapping Exceptional Green Screen in an

tag and

Custom graphic design, high quality photos, and an interactive green screen experience. in an

Those theme the page nicely.

Even though most of these keywords are probably geared toward researchers trying to do photography they can be repurposed to strengthen your top level keyword.  You could write along the topic line I suggest and then link up to your top level "Green Screen Photography in Oakland".  This was just my quick thought when I saw you wanting to get all URL targety.. this is where you can keyword target your URLS and add value to your vistor/consumer.

Remember your goal is to strengthen your sites theme and these will help.

green screen photography tips - content piece about tips for getting ready to be shot infront of a green screen

green screen photography software - educate your consumer about your editing process, if any, that takes place after a shoot and why its better than everyone elses.  If you do not edit and only print then educate them about that.

what is green screen photography - As mentioned above a bit about it

green screen photography backgrounds - this is another great educational piece for consumers. also will allow you to "one up" the competition... get fun with this conversation

green screen still photography  - do a vs green screen for film and why they need a specialist.

[j0a0vargas]

I saw the site http://www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/index.html

Your URL structure is great, need not change.

Page title (TAG TITLE) are cool, but are more than 12 words, and more than 62 characters.

In content, put the key phrases in H1 as exceptional Green Screen, Green Secreen Event, etc..

In the content you can use keywords in bold. I think you can use internal links too.

You said you could not create more pages, I think customization, quality, interactive, how it work, our clients, marketing events, corporate parties, weddings, reunions, bar ... could be pages with content. If you can create a better LandingPage for each subject, think that each issue is a possibility to search.

Images should have alt tag, the logo is out, should be Green Screen, etc.. Place alt in all the images you put on your site, with the matter relating to it.

I also think you have a great subject to create a blog, updated weekly with news and events involved, it contributes much to the SEO of the site

I hope that helped.

[Copstead]

This type of marketing works better with larger sites.  When you have a simple website with just a home, about, contact, and pricing page, it is really hard to optimize a Contact page for something else then contact.  (it may be done, but I wouldn't focus on this).

Remember that you already have greenscreen in your url.  So if you really want to focus on different phrases, you may have to break apart or build more pages about what you do.  Or even have a section that is "what-is-greenscreen/"

With this site and only having 4 pages, I would focus on link building towards the home page.

Also, with taking a quick look you have a few other issues you should take care of.  The first is with Canonicalization.  As of right now you can access your home page with two different urls (seen as duplicate content).

• http://www.liveimagegreenscreen.com
• http://www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/index.html

How to fix that here: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization

I hope that helps.

[pharcydeabc]

Thanks for the reply!  If you don't mind, would you take a look at my website an let me know if I'm headed in the right direction.  I'm not done building the website, but I worked on getting the text, title tags, descriptions to where I want them.  Below is a list of the page and the keyword that I tried to optimize for.  I tried to put the keyword once in the heading, once in the pitch line, and 3-4 times in the text body.

Home: Green Screen

About: Event Photography

Work: Greenscreen

Pricing: Green Screen Photography

Website: http://www.liveimagegreenscreen.com/index.html

[pharcydeabc]

I think that I understand what you're saying.  So just leave the Home, About, Contact pages as just that, without adding any additional keywords to the URL.

We really only offer 1 service, which is Green screen event photography.  However, when potential customers search for our service, I'd imagine they'd use different variations of the term, such as:

Green Screen

Greenscreen

Green Screen Photography

Green Screen Events

Event Photography

It's not possible to create a new webpage for each keyword, because they are really just gramatical variations of the same service.  So I've just assigned them to existing web pages, such as Home, About, Contact, etc....and worked the keywords into each page so that it reads naturally to the human reader.

Do you think that it's OK like this?

[Saijo.George]

Heavens No !!

That would be when your landing page targets those keywords so if you have,  ...com/green-screen-home.html as one of the internal page and target that keyword " Green Screen Home" that advice would apply.

IF you have optimized your homepage for " Green Screen " by other ways like having relavant unique content on there and getting editorial back links to that page , then you should be ok.Remember the advice given there are guidelines and don't always apply ( an excellent example is in your case )

You could also look at targeting the keywords on its own landing pages instead of trying to get you keywords with generic pages like About us and Pricing.

One big advice you should take away from that guide is " Make your pages for visitors and not Search Engines " . If you went to a website and went in to the pricing page would you

• want to read about " Green Screen Photography"
• would you be ok to see the pricing page look like com/green-screen-photography-pricing.html

I would assume NO, I go to pricing page I am happy to see the pricing packages on offer , perhaps a table outlining the difference between the various products on offer , etc

Hope this helps

[j0a0vargas]

Hello,

I think you are not using the best strategy.

First the home of the site need not have the main keyword. How is the very guide of SEOmoz, the URL is one of the factors does not mean you need to put in the URL to rank well.

I do not think it's good you put the home of your site as greenscreen-work.html.

The pages "WORK", "ABOUT" and "PRICING", could always have the URLs related to the page content, that is WORK, ABOUT and PRICING, just that.

The URL is one of the factors to guide the search robots, not to manipulate rankings.

I suggest to the Keywords you want to rank, you create a specific page with good content, images, videos and yes, all metrics ON-PAGE, such as bold headings, etc..

Create specific pages for each service, with the associated URL, and if you are unsure which service is most searched or relevant, I suggest you do a search of competition and the amount of search keywords, to choose the best for your company. Right here on SEOmoz Keyword Analysis tool which is very good.

example:

com... / work / greenscreen.html

com ... /work / eventphotography.html