Is it better to place keywords in folder or filename?

[kgam]

Question for our resident gurus...

For ranking purposes, is it better to place keywords in a URL folder or in the filename itself (i.e. www.example.com/keyword/page.html or www.example.com/keyword.html)? Does Google treat these differently than Yahoo, MSN or others? In my experience and tests, I have not seen a difference between these, but I wonder what you have seen.

Obviously thing such as internal link structure, content, inbound links, etc. all play into the ranking, but assuming all else is the same, does placement of the keyword matter or is it simply a style preference?

How about for category pages? Would you recommend they be www.example.com/category/ or www.example.com/category.html

[kgam]

Any thoughts?

[bradbox]

Personally I don't think it matters. Google knows that URLs are being rewritten unnecessarily, and it can counter both directories and folder names.

[JohnW]

Why not just make all of the important pages be like this www.example.com/keyword/
they don't have to be a category page to use this structure. My rule is make URIs as short as possible, use the keywords and if a page is important then let it be (or look like it is) the default page of it's own folder.

[kgam]

Why not just make all of the important pages be like this www.example.com/keyword/
they don't have to be a category page to use this structure. My rule is make URIs as short as possible, use the keywords and if a page is important then let it be (or look like it is) the default page of it's own folder.

That is a thought that I had not had. It is simple, which often means good.

[rapidvectorseo]

For ranking purposes, is it better to place keywords in a URL folder or in the filename itself

Believe it works fine...
e.g. If you have halloween shopping website and you want to create a page called boys halloween costume than you should go in below mentioned manner.

yourdomain.com/kidshalloweencostumes/boyscostumes.html

here you covers kids Halloween costumes as well as boys Halloween costumes in keywords. and if you have a keyword in domain whichever Halloween or Costumes, you will be ranking on top of SE's.