Rename index.php or keyword in URL?

[svdg]

It is important for me to get good search results for keyword + city name

For instance: tulips amsterdam

What would be better: renaming index.php or adding the cityname to the URL?

www.example.com/amsterdam/tulips

OR

www.example.com/pages/tulips-amsterdam

[svdg]

You sure did, thanks!

[joseph.chambers]

answered. I hope I was helpful.

[joseph.chambers]

answered. I hope I was helpful.

[svdg]

I just sent a PM

[joseph.chambers]

I just think your over complicating it.

[svdg]

No, that's not what I mean. I am concerned that it will be seen as duplicate within my site, not compared to another site.

• the home page (index)

• copy of homepage, but renamed to /tulips-amsterdam

In all the 'home' buttons of the site you point back to www.example.com/tulips-amsterdam instead of pointing to / or www.example.com. Will that be seen as duplicate within the site and would it be harmfull?

[joseph.chambers]

Sure it says the same thing but if you look at it and you feel the message your delivering is better then you should be able to rank higher.

Think of it like this: /car/make/year/part/ How many people have that  url structure.. a lot. Just because you have the same url structure does not mean it's duplicate.

[svdg]

OK thanks. One final question:

I saw a site (good scoring on that keyword) where they did this: The home button was not pointing to / but to /tulips-amsterdam.

The only thing I can imagine is that there are two exactly the same pages: index, where you will land at www.example.com and a copy of index, renamed to tulips-amsterdam. It seems to work very good. But wil there be a risk to get penalized for duplicate content?

[joseph.chambers]

Then I would go with: www.example.com/tulips-amsterdam because there is no reason to have a / vs - www.example.com/tulips-amsterdam does fine.

[svdg]

No, /amsterdam/ contains no page.

The CMS needs a 'container', like 'pages'

So it would be: www.example.com/pages/tulips-amsterdam

To get rid of that 'pages' I thought it might be an idea to rename 'pages' to 'amsterdam'. The result is that every URL contains the keyword 'amsterdam'. But I wonder what will be better:

www.example.com/amsterdam/tulips

OR

www.example.com/pages/tulips-amsterdam

www.example.com/tulips-amsterdam

In the last option the 'pages' container name has stripped with htaccess

[joseph.chambers]

Will you have more information about /amsterdam/ ? since we going with flowers in amsterdam then I would imagine a page about the different flowers in amsterdam.

So if you have more information of offer in amsterdam then I would say: /amsterdam/tulips