Is this good practise for SEO: www.example.com/testing-once/testing-once.aspx?

[CoGri]

My web developer is telling me that it is best practice for SEO to place your keyword in your URL twice. For Example: www.example.com/testing-once/testing-once.aspx. I'm sure that this is not true, could you please help?

[TomRayner]

I'm not sure where they're getting that information, but it's pretty ill-advised.

Now, there is some evidence to suggest that there is a correlation between having your keyword in the URL and higher rankings, see this searchmetrics study for more details.

The influence, however, is barely noticeable and having the keyword twice will very likely add no benefit at all. If anything, it may result in your URL looking spammy to a user, or even over-optimised to Google, which is a bad thing.

Include it once if you can, don't worry if you can't. Forcing to include it twice is definite overkill.

Hope this helps.

[CoGri]

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer this question. You have pretty much confirmed everything I thought. I will definitely be taking your advice going forward.

Again, many thanks for the help.