In addition to having a good keyword in your domain name, you need to have good keywords in your filenames.

Filenames are the names you use to save your webpages. Here's an example of a filename...

http://www.realestatehow.com/2007/10/buying-foreclosure-home.htm

Most search engines, Google and Yahoo included, use the filename as a factor towards determining relevancy.

The advantage of using filenames as an SEO strategy is that you can make a filename as long as you want, up to 256 characters long.

So, think of all the most popular search terms relating to one of your webpages. If your webpage is about "Home Selling Tips", why not use "home-selling-tips.htm"?

The fact of the matter is, there's a lot of people searching Google for exactly that phrase.

If you're an agent based in San Diego, then try using, "san-diego-home-selling-tips.htm".

Dashes or Underscores?

When creating your filenames, use the dash "-" to separate words. Don't use underscores "_".

There's a lot of discussion on this very topic all over the Internet, and the majority seems to agree that Google sees the dash as a space, and sees the underscore as a hard character. Meaning, a file of "home-selling-tips" is seen as a phrase of three words, whereas "home_selling_tips" is seen as one word.

What this means is that if someone searched for the phrase "tips for selling a home", the dashed-filename will have a greater chance of showing up, than the underscored-filename.

Labels: Search-Engine-Optimization