SEO URL Hierarchy

Question

Currently I have a site developed in cakephp that has the following type of URL's:

http://www.travelenvogue.com/clubs/page/accommodations/1-Ritz_Carlton_Club_Bachelor_Gulch

I have heard that because our most valuable keywords "Ritz Carlton Club Bachelor Gulch" are so far to the right of the beginning of the URL that they may not be helping us for SEO purposes. My first question is if this is accurate?

Secondly, my programmer told me he could change it for less time/money to:

Ex:travelenvogue.xxx/1-Ritz_Carlton_Club_Bachelor_Gulch/accommodations (with the 1 before the keywords)

or (for more significantly more time/money) to: Ex:travelenvogue.xxx/Ritz_Carlton_Club_Bachelor_Gulch/accommodations

Is the URL without the 1 in front of the keywords much more helpful than the one with the 1 in front of the keywords.

Any help is appreciated, I'm so confused! :)

Answer 1

Yes it is right. More your main keyword close to the root folder more points it will get in Search engine.

This is not the only SEO thing. in On page optimisation. your main keyword must be present in following.

1. Page title
2. H1 Tag
3. URL(in domain if possible)
4. In Image alt tag)
5. in Links on your home page.
6. meta keywords and description. (still some search count it)
7. first sentence of each paragraph
8. end of page.
9. you keyword must be sparse 20% in the whole page content in different places.

on off page optimisation, How popular you site with your keyword is on other sites.

Answer 2

Generally, there is more SEO weight for the page higher in the site hierarchy. For example, in order from good to bad.

www.mysite.com/page1
www.mysite.com/sub/page2
www.mysite.com/sub/sub/page3

Exactly how much weight depends the search engine. But keep in mind there are other factors.

In my opinion, the 1 before the title would not hurt you any more or less than the other example.

I will say the best would be: travelenvogue.com/1-Ritz_Carlton_Club_Bachelor_Gulch

In the end, SEO can be a bit of black magic. That is to say this particular optimization doesn't mean your page will appear ahead of another page that is under several sub directories. So you will have to decide time and budget.

Answer 3

The problem with rewriting the urls in backwards order like this is that it makes less sense to humans, especially since CakePHP's pretty-url structure is designed to conform to the accepted informal standard.

Here are Google's own recommendations: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329&hl=en

The thing to remember is that Google are good at picking up keywords from your URLs and from your pages. So long as your pages and URLs follow a semantic, logical structure, there is very little to worry about.

Edit: As an addendum to the above - the 1 is redundant as far as both users and search engines are concerned, since it doesn't add any keyword value and is apparently some kind of identifier. It's the sort of thing that should be separated from the keywords somehow (usually by using a directory structure - http://example.com/accommodations/1/hotel-name ). Probably too late to change it now if it's a mature app, though.