How important is keyword usage in the URL?

[Whebb]

Hi,
We have a client who has engaged us recently for some SEO work and most of their website looks pretty good seo-wise already. Many of their site pages rank at the top or middle of page two for their targeted keywords. In many cases they are not using the targeted keyword in the URL and most pages could use some additional on-page clean up. My question is, is it worth it to re-write the URLs to include the targeted keyword and then do 301 redirects to send the old pages to the new ones in order to improve the ranking? Or should we just do the minor on page work in hopes that this will be enough to improve the rankings and push them on to the first page. Thanks.

[TakeshiYoung]

I usually advise against changing URL structure for an established site, but keywords in the URL do have some impact. A good approach would be to test re-writing the URLs for a couple of pages and see if it has an impact. If the change is positive, then roll it out across more pages.

[Whebb]

Appreciate the response. Will test this on a few pages and see if it leads to better results. Thanks.