Changing acatalog

[Mark H]

One for the SEO gurus:

We are setting up a new site/shop, and have started out by changing the "acatalog" folder to "steel" (we only sell stainless steel) because:

• It's easy in V9
• We fancy something a bit different

Given that most of the section/product names that come after "steel" will have "stainless-steel" somewhere in the name, will the change:

• Improve SEO
• Damage SEO
• Make absolutely no difference......

One other factor to consider is that the shop in my sig already has similar section/product names following "acatalog", so we are keen to be as different as possible between the two shops.

[Mike Hughes]

It should help you marginally in seo because you now have an additional keyword in the page pathname. The benefit is only going to be minor though as a pathname is not a good indicator of what the page's content will be, so it won't be ranked highly. You're also only using a single keyword.

As an aside, anyone can do something similar even without V9, as you can easily put your actinic ecommerce site on www.yourdomain.com/blue-widgets/acatalog/. Not many (any?) people have bothered to do this which might be a usefull guide as to how beneficial people think it is.

Mike

[Darren B]

Im currently working on a new site, still undecided what i intend to use it for, maybe sell it when finished its a niche product and the url's are good to.

I have renamed the acatalog but it means the keyword is repeated.

basically the product has two part name, it is the registered trade mark and then the product name. It's a special material so there is only two product ranges and the manufacturers market it as such. "trademark product A" and "trademark product B"

So does anyone have any suggestions on what might be a better way around it.

I have the domain names for trademark-productA.co.uk & trademark-productB.co.uk and have renamed the acatalog to trademark but this was a quick thing when i 1st setup to test.

I hope that makes sense, probably not i know but i considered simply changing it to products.

thanks
D

[chris ashdown]

I would make the section names as full and descriptive as possible

Stainless steel Pans
Stainless steel pots
Stainless steel Untensiles
etc

Rather than all under Stainless steel

[Mark H]

Hmmm

Perhaps we should change "acatalog" to "stainless-steel" rather than just "steel".

[Mike Hughes]

You might sell stainless steel stuff but is that what your customers start out looking for? The first thing you should is some keyword research to work out exactly what potential customers are using in their search terms.

Mike

[pinbrook]

must admit i don't like the idea of domain.co.uk/stainless-steel/stainless-steel-pots.html

i'd play safe and go for domain.co.uk/shop/stainless-steel-pots.html

if you find google penalises you for double stainless-steels you are left with having to change your urls.

better to have one instance of stainless-steel in the url, then use page title, h1 tags and body text to optimise with

[grantglendinnin]

'Buy' is also a very popular search phrase used online which tends to convert for obvious reasons.

buy stainless steel pots
buy stainless steel spoons
buy stainless steel forks

etc

Thus:

domain.co.uk/buy/stainless-steel-pots.html

[Mike Hughes]

Or even 'Stylish' or 'Designer' for his target market. Hence the need to do some keyword research.

Mike

[Darren B]

Mark can i say, i love your site loads of stuff and extremely easy to navigate

[Mark H]

Thanks everyone, I've only just revisited this thread since I posted on the 19th

I think you're right, best to use something relevant but complementary rather than repetitive.

[brucet]

Keywords in page names can give you significant SEO benefit, particularly with MSN but also to some extent with Google and Yahoo! A keyword in a directory/folder name will give a little benefit, but nowhere near as much. So by all means use it, but do use the keyword in the pagenames as well, wherever relevant.