Dashing Through the Snow

People often obsess about including the right keywords in a page's URL. The URL is a small piece of the SEO pie, but a piece nonetheless. So if you do indeed obsess over this detail, it is important that the keywords help in rankings as much as possible. So what is the correct way to write your URL if there is more than one word?

We've all seen a wide variety of ways to separate the words in the subdirectories of your domain. In order appease the search engine gods, the most beneficial punctuation to use when seperating the keywords is a dash. The major search engines do take puntuation into account. Using an underscore between words connects them, so the value of three keywords connected by two underscores in reduced to the value of one keyword phrase.

Because a dash a ligitimate word-separater, the search engines must look at the subdirectories of your domain as individual words. If my URL is http://www.domain.com/scillanti-pickles-spears.html and these keywords are supported by my meta-tags and content, I can potentially rank for the brand (Scillanti), the product (pickles), and maybe even a few Britney fans (Spears).

Yahoo Facing Internal Restructuring, Job Cuts

According to an internal company memo written by Yahoo Senior Vice President Brad Garlinghouse, the search engine giant is set to undergo a dramatic organizational shake-up including significant cuts in its work force of up to 20 percent.

The memo, also known as "The Peanut Butter Manifesto" because it compares Yahoo’s investment strategy to spreading peanut butter too thinly on a slice of bread, was published in the Saturday edition of The Wall Street Journal. In the memo, Garlinghouse stated that Yahoo as a company suffers from a lack of consistent leadership, business focus and a "single cohesive strategy."
This blatant call for immediate restructuring comes on the heels of a series of embarrassing events that have caused Yahoo shares to lose 31.5 percent of their value thus far this year. Yahoo is also apparently struggling with a slowdown in parts of its advertising business while racing to keep pace with faster growing search engine rival Google Inc.

The Wall Street Journal story also describes rumors that Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig and Chief Financial Officer Sue Decker could be elevated to become co-presidents of the company, in preparation for the retirement of Yahoo Chairman and Chief Executive Terry Semel.

A Yahoo spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the Garlinghouse memo, but declined to comment directly on details contained in the memo or the Wall Street Journal article.