Crazy Istaria web addresses...

[Akrion]

Some pages branching off istaria.com:

Istaria_MMORPG_is_a_Free_to_Play_PvE_fantasy_onlin e_role_playing_sandbox_game.html
Tell_me_about_the_massively_multiplayer_online_rol e_playing_game_Istaria.html

This is absolutely insane.

What_avatars_toons_or_characters_are_playable_in_I staria_are_there_Dragons.html

This one is even two sentences!

Why are all the links like this? They're not meant to be descriptions, they're file names. xD (For example, good html file name practices would be using all lower case and keeping the names relatively short, under 30 to 50 characters if you can.)

Just my two cents, anyway. The website will have a fair number of people shaking their heads if left this way, though.

[Raptress]

You guys. I. I've dabbled, very, very amateurishly, in web design, and this. This. I. I am dumbstruck anyone would name pages this way. I don't want to sound mean, but.. this looks really unprofessional, to say the least. If I just stumbled across Istaria and then noticed those HTML file names, I'm not sure I'd be able to take the web site seriously after that.

[Kesqui]

And, unfortunately, if the "chain" of words contains more than three hyphens or underscores (i.e. more than four words) it's not doing any good for SEO anyway.

The first page link should be something like free-fantasy-mmorpg.html
The second one should be something like about-istaria-rpg.html
And the third one should be something like istaria-character-classes.html

"or", "are", "in" and "what" are not key words, they do not assist optimisation, so they shouldn't be in the URL.

Not to mention, if I'm typing a link to a friend in an e-mail or on another forum, I am NOT going to bother typing out that long, long, LONG URL.... I won't be able to remember it.

[Chasing]

*sighs*

Got to love the way everyone gets on the bandwagon....

Whats the purpose of Istaria.com?

To draw in new players

How do you increase the draw?

Make the pages relevant to the search engines aka Google

-----------------------------

Istaria_MMORPG_is_a_Free_to_Play_PvE_fantasy_onlin e_role_playing_sandbox_game.html

11 keywords on that one URL

11 different areas that the search engines will rank on. Each keyword is unique so no keyword stuffing.

If you look into the code a bit deeper you will see that the metas and the URL's both differ which means twice as many keywords are pushed into the search engines.

As for short naming, its not required in this context, if it was the community website then maybe shorter URL's would be more relevant for page linking. Are people really going to link to a specific page on Istaria.com or just put in 'http:\\istaria.com\' as the page link.

The purpose is to catch potential players when they are browsing the search engines (which is just clicking links), not when they are typing in addresses.

The URL is far more important to SEO than meta's or the page content.

If you dig into the site's structure a bit deeper, you will find a lot more keywords and variations spread across all the different pages to try and get a higher keyword spread.

And, unfortunately, if the "chain" of words contains more than three hyphens or underscores (i.e. more than four words) it's not doing any good for SEO anyway.

How so? are you referring to organic naming here?

[Akrion]

*sighs*

Got to love the way everyone gets on the bandwagon....

The colossoal number of 2 people 'getting on the bandwagon'. 2 is the new 'everyone'.

Flaw with your reasoning here: Unless you can point out a number of other websites using this strategy, and that it's effectively worth it, it looks bad/silly/unprofessional. Also key words such as 'a', 'the', 'is', 'are', etc. are absolutely useless.

[LungTien Temeraire]

I don't find it that bad, silly or unprofessional, myself. I don't know if a lot of people commonly use 'a',, 'is',... as keywords, but there isn't only these words, also 'istaria',; 'mmorpg', 'dragon',... have we proof that system isn't working? some might find Istaria with keywords like that, like I did while looking for games with dragons.

[Chasing]

I don't find it that bad, silly or unprofessional, myself. I don't know if a lot of people commonly use 'a',, 'is',... as keywords, but there isn't only these words, also 'istaria',; 'mmorpg', 'dragon',... have we proof that system isn't working? some might find Istaria with keywords like that, like I did while looking for games with dragons.

Yep the Google Analytics will tell the true story.

[LOVWYRM]

I agree with Chasing and Lung!

[Akrion]

I can't seem to find an article that recommends keyword flooding. So please, Chasing, I would love to see one that suggests this is good SEO, because I don't in any way believe it is.

"What avatars toons or characters are playable in Istaria are there Dragons"

This mentions Istaria only once. Every other keyword in there other than Dragon is absolutely meaningless towards Istaria over any other MMO, and Dragon will catch so many other results it might as well also be meaningless.

The only way I can get Istaria even on the first page without directly mentioning Istaria is by copying the majority of the sentence in a URL. Something such as "Playable Dragons" and Istaria is nowhere to be found. "Playable Dragons mmo" and Istaria is only 5th in the results. Funnily it's sitting under the forums of a company that makes a completely free game with playable deer (Tale-of-tales).

"Free to play fantasy MMORPG" and Istaria is nowhere to be found.
"Free to play fantasy online sandbox" and Istaria is only 7th. Below results that have nothing to do with video games.
"Playable Dragon characters" and Istaria is nowhere to be found.
"Playable Dragon characters mmo" And Istaria is 3rd, however "Playable Dragon characters mmorpg" and Istaria is 6th.
"Playing a dragon character" and Istaria is nowhere to be found.
"Playing a dragon character MMORPG" and Istaria is 2nd from the bottom of the 2nd page. And again, funnily enough, below Tale-of-tales which is 2nd on the first page.
"Playing a dragon character mmo" and Istaria is 4th from the bottom of the 2nd page, Tale-of-tales still holds the same spot.

I'm intentionally not using perfect searching methods for the fact that most people looking for a potential game like Istaria won't be either. This was all using google. As far as I'm concerned, this usage of keyword flooding with the URL is doing no good unless you happen to search for a portion of the exact phrase used which is the only way I've been able to get Istaria near the top consistantly, and even then in some cases it doesn't hit 1st. To me the fact the last two searches only put istaria.com to the 2nd page at best says that this silly URL naming scheme isn't working the wonders you say it should be, Chasing.

[LungTien Temeraire]

It depends of the quotes, some quoted here weren't made only of meaningless words. Also, when ones searches, he generally doesn't only look at the 2 or 3 first results, or the first page, but more than that. Finding it pointless and stupid may be more an opinion than a verified fact, I think.

[Chasing]

Well Akrion is welcome to his opinion, I just don't agree with it.

To point you in the right direction I would suggest you do some research on the following.

• Organic naming
• Keyword spread and density
• Organic keywords and target audience
• Short URL's vs Long URL's

What you will find is a number of websites arguing for one way of doing things, and another for doing it another way. So its about using what works on a practical basis.

SEO is a very cloak and dagger business and constantly changing.

As mentioned before, the best measure is Google Analytics where I would be looking at the UV and bounce figures. (I would not recommend looking at sites such as Alexa as they are badly skewed views of data and not representative of actual figures).

Another point as well is I wouldn't trust all the 'free' SEO tools on offer, one tool may show loads of issues (they want you to buy their product :P), where as another may not pick up many issues.

[Kesqui]

Have had a chance to have a chat with my colleagues in the SEO team at work (yes, I work in "digital marketing") today.

Their recommendation was to use hyphens in preference to underscores, as per this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3SFVfDIS5k
Basically, people don't search for "role_playing_game" (all one word including underscores) - they search for "role playing game" (three separate words). Google treats underscores as continuing the word, while hyphens are not treated in the same way.

Also, this post suggests that long URLs are not particularly user-friendly. Targeting the URLs to common search queries ("playable dragon characters") and using fewer words in the URL will make them user friendly *and* search engine friendly.

It'd be interesting to have a look at the Webmaster Tools/Analytics goals for the site and see what search queries actually lead to game client downloads.

[Chasing]

Have had a chance to have a chat with my colleagues in the SEO team at work (yes, I work in "digital marketing") today.

Their recommendation was to use hyphens in preference to underscores, as per this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3SFVfDIS5k
Basically, people don't search for "role_playing_game" (all one word including underscores) - they search for "role playing game" (three separate words). Google treats underscores as continuing the word, while hyphens are not treated in the same way.

Also, this post suggests that long URLs are not particularly user-friendly. Targeting the URLs to common search queries ("playable dragon characters") and using fewer words in the URL will make them user friendly *and* search engine friendly.

It'd be interesting to have a look at the Webmaster Tools/Analytics goals for the site and see what search queries actually lead to game client downloads.

Sorry Kes.....

The post you linked is 5 years out of date, also it has 9 words in its page name, does that class it as a long url?

But then again you could probably find 10 pages on the short url camp, and 10 on the long url camp quite quickly digging thru Google.

The U-tube video is 2 years out of date (and you need to take what that individual at Google says with a pinch of salt - there is a lot that he doesn't say :P). Also the way search engines process - and _ has changed since then (but either way should work).

[Firebrand]

I have no opinion about this, but just to say Virtrium is not the only company to do it. I have noticed the following addresses today on a famous game editor/creator (you know, the one with a plumber):

http://www.*******.fr/NOE/fr_FR/news/2011/telechargez_gratuitement_des_bandes-annonces_3d_des_titres_phares_et_des_prochains_jeux_sur_*******_3**_43715.html

or

http://www.*******.fr/NOE/fr_FR/news/2011/le_site_web_complet_de_**********_red_the_hunter_est_maintenant_en_ligne_43602.html

As most of you don't read french, you will have to believe me, but I assure you these addresses are full sentences (subject, verb, etc...).

[Frith-Rae]

Nerd Arguments FTW!

[Akrion]

Nerd aguments? Hardly. x3

Hey guys..
const, typedef, or #define?
Procedural or Object Oriented?
What programming language is the best?
What's the best compiler?
Courier New or Consolas?
*Can go on forever* xD

[Steelclaw]

Super Nintendo or Genesis?

[Chasing]

Super Nintendo or Genesis?

SNES forever :P

[Akrion]

ATI or Nvidia? AMD or Intel?

[LungTien Temeraire]

Chicken or cows? *leaves