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I've read many conflicting things about URL redirecting
is
http://www.fareadvice.ca/vancouver
better for SEO than
http://www.fareadvice.ca/map.aspx?C=Vancouver&P=British Columbia
would appreciate advice Also do image names play a big part in ranking? Image names (alt tags) should be optimised as a way of getting keywords in. Url redirecting is also referred to as creating search friendly urls. This allows you to again control the keywords in the url and again is very important for ranking, a keyword or hyphen separated keywords will rank a lot better than the random collection of numbers and letters that is auto generated. We have to get our terms right. This is how conflicting advice happens!
What you are talking about it URL rewriting (not redirecting) to create Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs.
My critique:
http://www.fareadvice.ca/vancouver
Has the word vancouver (plus)
Looks nice (plus)
easy to type in (plus)
http://www.fareadvice.ca/map.aspx?C=Vancouver&P=British Columbia
has more keywords (plus plus)
uses query string parameters (minus)
Does not look nice (minus)
Hard to type in (minus)
Has spaces in it (minus)
Of the two, the first is better. But I would personally consider...
http://www.fareadvice.ca/british-columbia/vancouver
And get the best of both worlds
Image Names
This is quite a vague phrase. Are you talking about the images file name, the full URL to the image, the title attribute, the alt attribute (note they are called attributes and not tags) or even the caption by the image.
Most of these (title excluded) can contribute to the words associated with the image and can help it perform better in image searches. They may also help the page perform in normal searches.
I'd avoid using the word ranking as this is often associated with PageRank which is not influenced by keywords. The image related keywords can improve your relevance to those keywords and therefore improve your chances of showing up in search results related to them. Right now, if you type Vancouver in google.com the results show Vancouver, British Columbia results on the first page. The 2010 Winter Olympics probably helped Google determine that people meant Vancouver, BC when searching. That or Google is IP sniffing (I'm in BC).
But... there is a Vancouver, Washington (305 miles (491 km) South of Vancouver, BC).
Previously when you typed in Vancouver, you mostly got Vancouver, Washington results.
There is a point to this.
I'm thinking that Tiggerito's suggestion of www.fareadvice.ca/british-columbia/vancouver might be the better way to go or maybe www.fareadvice.ca/vancouver-british-columbia/ because Vancouverites would probably search for vancouver bc or vancouver british columbia (see above for why).
You also have London (Ontario) but there is London, England (plus any others around the world). If you Google London, City of London Ontario has snuck in at #8 but the rest of the results are London, England on the first page.
Thinking Ontario people would be searching for london ontario to get Canadian results.
Is this site catering to locals? or tourists?
is
http://www.fareadvice.ca/vancouver
better for SEO than
http://www.fareadvice.ca/map.aspx?C=Vancouver&P=British Columbia
would appreciate advice Also do image names play a big part in ranking? Image names (alt tags) should be optimised as a way of getting keywords in. Url redirecting is also referred to as creating search friendly urls. This allows you to again control the keywords in the url and again is very important for ranking, a keyword or hyphen separated keywords will rank a lot better than the random collection of numbers and letters that is auto generated. We have to get our terms right. This is how conflicting advice happens!
What you are talking about it URL rewriting (not redirecting) to create Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs.
My critique:
http://www.fareadvice.ca/vancouver
Has the word vancouver (plus)
Looks nice (plus)
easy to type in (plus)
http://www.fareadvice.ca/map.aspx?C=Vancouver&P=British Columbia
has more keywords (plus plus)
uses query string parameters (minus)
Does not look nice (minus)
Hard to type in (minus)
Has spaces in it (minus)
Of the two, the first is better. But I would personally consider...
http://www.fareadvice.ca/british-columbia/vancouver
And get the best of both worlds
Image Names
This is quite a vague phrase. Are you talking about the images file name, the full URL to the image, the title attribute, the alt attribute (note they are called attributes and not tags) or even the caption by the image.
Most of these (title excluded) can contribute to the words associated with the image and can help it perform better in image searches. They may also help the page perform in normal searches.
I'd avoid using the word ranking as this is often associated with PageRank which is not influenced by keywords. The image related keywords can improve your relevance to those keywords and therefore improve your chances of showing up in search results related to them. Right now, if you type Vancouver in google.com the results show Vancouver, British Columbia results on the first page. The 2010 Winter Olympics probably helped Google determine that people meant Vancouver, BC when searching. That or Google is IP sniffing (I'm in BC).
But... there is a Vancouver, Washington (305 miles (491 km) South of Vancouver, BC).
Previously when you typed in Vancouver, you mostly got Vancouver, Washington results.
There is a point to this.
I'm thinking that Tiggerito's suggestion of www.fareadvice.ca/british-columbia/vancouver might be the better way to go or maybe www.fareadvice.ca/vancouver-british-columbia/ because Vancouverites would probably search for vancouver bc or vancouver british columbia (see above for why).
You also have London (Ontario) but there is London, England (plus any others around the world). If you Google London, City of London Ontario has snuck in at #8 but the rest of the results are London, England on the first page.
Thinking Ontario people would be searching for london ontario to get Canadian results.
Is this site catering to locals? or tourists?