This is something that we get asked a lot and is something that we often discuss with our clients.
Is there any search engine optimisation benefit to having keywords in your website URLs? Well according to Matt Cutts, there is a small benefit in Google to showing keywords in your URL. There is also some evidence that having keywords in your URLs will help rankings in Yahoo. Matt Cutts posted a video to the YouTube channel for Google Webmaster tools – this video gives his comments on the positioning of keywords in your URLs.
However, changing URLs on your website should be done with caution, if your website is already working ok in Google and the other engines making changes to your URL structure could hurt your rankings.
If you currently have issues with your URLs and they need rewriting anyway, this is something to consider. As part of your SEO work you should have identified your core keywords to promote to
If you do change your URLs make sure that all the old URLs on the site are 301 redirected to the new URLs so that any search engine listings get transferred to the new URL and any of your existing customers who have bookmarked your pages can find the new pages when they visit you from their bookmark.
