I am building a new page with a keyword focus on a two word phrase (home business) I'm wondering what the structure of the url will do to my rankings. I'm considering one of 4 different url's

www.abc.com/home-business.htm
www.abc.com/home%20buiness.htm
www.abc.com/homebusiness.htm
www.abc.com/business.htm

Can anyone shed some light on which I should use?

I am building a new page with a keyword focus on a two word phrase (home business) I'm wondering what the structure of the url will do to my rankings. I'm considering one of 4 different url's

www.abc.com/home-business.htm
www.abc.com/home%20buiness.htm
www.abc.com/homebusiness.htm
www.abc.com/business.htm

Can anyone shed some light on which I should use?

As "-" [hyphen] is a word separator it is best to use it if focusing on 2-word phrases.

However, assuming a website will expand over time and purely root level pages can because quite unmanageable [a couple of hundred pages in a directory is too easy to make a stupid mistake...

it would be best to go domain.com/business/home-business.htm

or if possibly expand quickly:

domain.com/gifts/home-business.htm
domain.com/jewelry/home-business.htm
domain.com/consulting/home-business.htm

This is such a popular topic that I've been keeping a list of past threads where it has also been covered. In particular, I recommend these two from June 2004:


Hyphenated URLs (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=87) SEO and file names (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=257) Feel free to cross-link to other similar discussions you may have seen. I'm keeping a list of these, as it's a popular topic.

Others to consider:

Change To Link Bomb Sign Of New Link Analysis Shift? (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=700), July 2004 repeating terms in URL (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=1505), Sept. 2004 URL Spaces & Alt Tag Naming Conventions (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=1734), Sept. 2004

I too have always liked this subject. I keep on my wall and example from August 19 that shows the top six results in Google (I am located near Baltimore, MD) for the search "debt consolidation loan uk."

I ran the same search (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-32,GGLD:en&q=debt+consolidation+loan+uk) today, and lo-and behold, two new URL's have earned their way in. In the "poster instance," all six top URLs included all four keywords in the search phrase. Four months later, the same can be said for the top four results, however #5 only has 3 of the four and #6 (DING DING DING) is a directory.

As directories continue to climb up the rankings, it is my belief that they will displace more and more "keyword enriched" URL's, no matter in which form they are broken down.