Are there any SEO benefits changing the default home page filename (index.htm) to a keyword rich filename

[Grafimart]

II'm a newbie. I have a website using the default home page filename: index.htm. I have total control over the web server. I was wondering whether I can get any SEO improvements for my main keyword if I change the default filename with a filename that contains the main keyword, like our-main-product.htm (doing the 301 redirect and changing the server search order, of course)?

[ThompsonPaul]

What you actually want to do is get rid of that index.htm address for your home page altogether, Oscar. You want your visitors to only be able to reach your homepage at one URL. This means you need to use 301 rewrites to make your /index.htm page redirect to your primary domain name. (E.g. the website name with no filename after it.)

You also want to make sure that you have chosen between www.youdomain.com and yourdomain.com (without the www) as the primary address, and rewritten the other one to point to the primary. This is called canonicalisation of the home page. The search engines see each of those addresses as completely different pages because they have different URLs - even though they display the same page. As a result, they'll be considered duplicate content and will effectively be competing against each other.

There are many questions here in Q&A that explain how to do these kind of redirects. Let us know if you can't find one that works for you.

Hope that helps?

Paul

[generalzod]

Google weights most of its SEO 'strength' to the actual domain name iteself - and even then, from left to right i.e the further right your main keyword is, the less juice it will get.

However, if you have relevant content on the page and name the page accordingly then you are making what is called an 'seo friendly' URL. Many people who use Wordpress for example, change their permalinks to change the url from something like mysite.com/p1 to mysite.com/keyword - which WILL make a difference, albeit not a huge one.
So if it's straightforward for you to do so, then by all means do it. Outside of SEO it will help your visitors better understand what the page is about, and will look a lot prettier in the SERPs too.

Also, rather than 301'ing each page, you may be able to change the structure of your permalinks within your .htaccess file so that it will happen automatically e.g by naming the file with the title of your page or postname.

Hope this helps...

[Grafimart]

Hi Paul:

I already got rid of the index.htm name appearing in the url homepage, and also I have all the needed 301 redirects for the mydomain.com, mydomain.com.mx and mydomain.mx pointing to www.grafimart.com. Please, take alook at: www.grafimart.com

What I really want to know is whether I can get some SEO benefit if I change the index.htm main home page filename for my main keyword: impresion-digital.htm, even when it is not to be shown to the users. In other words: Does the google bots consider as a valid keyword the index page name, even when it is not shown?

http://www.grafimart.com/impresion-digital.htm

instead of:

http://www.grafimart.com/index.htm

I´m thinking on this based on the fact that my domain name is a branded name and I find difficult to get better SEO for my main page using a subdomain like

(impresion-digital.grafimart.com)

Hope you can understand my poorly written english.

Oscar

[ThompsonPaul]

Hey Oscar - my second language is French and I couldn't possibly have asked the question in my other language as well as you have here, so don't worry about the language issue at all!

For your question about changing the index.htm to something with a keyword: no, that would have absolutely no effect. As long as the redirect was with a 301 code, the search engines and the visitors will never know that page even exists. That's the whole purpose of the 301-redirect. it makes that page invisible to the search engines.

I would also strongly advise not to switch to a keyword-rich subdomain. that's just asking for a lot of headaches and problems in the future.

What you are suggesting here is trying to create what is called and Exact Match Domain (EMD), meaning the title of your domain matches the keyword you are trying to rank for. The value of these has recently been lowered by Google anyway, and as I say, doing it using a subdomain will cause all kinds of hassles, not to mention confusion for your users.

If I were you, the area i would be focusing most of my efforts would be on building and earning links form other websites. At the moment, you essentially only have one other domain linking to you.

In addition, trying to rank with a very competitive general term like impresión digital will be very difficult for a new site. Better to use terms like impresión digital en Chihuahua and others related to where you offer your services. This is assuming that most of your customers are fairly local, not from all over the Internet.

Hope that answers your question? If not, be sure to let me know.

Paul

[Grafimart]

Thasnk you so much for your help, Paul.