I read a post this morning from SEO blogger Gregor Spowart, which I want to share with you.
In his post, he asks if The Guardian’s website is ‘keyword stuffing:’
While browsing the Guardian website I came across a story which had this fantastic URL:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/feb/23/honda-formula-one-bernie-ecclestone-richard-branson-jenson-button-bruno-senna-mercedes-benz
The aim of having such a huge URL is that when someone links to the story (just like I’ve done), the anchor text is full of nice rich keywords which should help the website’s SEO. Whilst I can’t argue that the keywords are all relevant, I wonder if it’s entirely necessary? In my opinion, it’s a variation on keyword stuffing. Also, Google has been known to devalue websites with lots of hyphens in the URL so their SEO attempt may actually backfire on them.
Source: The MassMediaDesign Blog
What do you think?
Is it a legit SEO technique?
Related posts:
Blame Charlie Brooker, he started it!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/21/charliebrooker.pressandpublishing
It does not look natural. Certainly keyword density has a place, but it has been somewhat devalued. I believe there is something on this in Matt Cutts’ blog (http://mattcutts.com/blog) on the topic. I make careful consideration to the inclusion of keywords in various proximity to each other and keyword density, but you should only go so far. If it looks awkward for users, the whole point is missed. Is traffic worth anything if you cannot convert it and you make the site useless to the audience? In this case, it is only in the URL, and the rest is not so spammy. It is just not done well in general. The title, description, keywords, and content are not very complementary. Everybody has a good and bad day … this author had a bad one. perhaps they need more training or help to assure better blogging.