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Section:: Web Articles < Archives > |
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Naming Your Files What does naming your website files have to do with marketing? More than you think! Some search engines count file names as keywords when ranking each page. Visitors will try to remember the URL of their favorite page so they can go back without wading through bookmarks or history lists. How you name your files is really important! First of all, pick an intuitive name for the file based on its content. The main keyword is your best choice, if you haven't already used it. Try adding a second keyword as a description: for example, chickenhistory.html. Length is not an issue in naming files for the internet, but capitalization and file extensions are. Always name your files using the same capitalization and extension. Either use all capitals all the time, all lower-case letters all the time, or always capitalize only the first letter. (Be aware that capitalizing the name of your home page, INDEX.HTML, may not work for all website hosts.) Make sure your file extensions have the same capitalization as the file name. If the file name is in all capital letters, capitalize HTML. Otherwise, use lower-case letters for html. If you use Windows 98, you can chang your file view to include extensions. In other versions of Windows, view your file names in DOS or using your FTP program. (For more information on this, visit your friendly neighborhood search engine.) I highly recommend sticking to all lower-case letters and the "html" extension for all your files, if possible. That is the usual method of naming files, and many visitors will try that first, when relying on memory. I know how important all this is, because naming files wrong was my first major mistake in web design. My visitors often get "404 File Not Found" error messages at my first website because an old Windows program capitalized all the file names when I created them, and then I made new ones lower-case after I stopped using the program. As a result, my first website is a tangle of conflicting cases! I can usually remember which ones should be capitalized, but my visitors can't, and I don't have time to go back and change them all, since that would involve changing all the links as well. (Not to mention screw up my visitors' bookmarks and any visitors who have been able to memorize the file names!) Take it from me. Name your files in lower-case.html, and you will have fewer 404 Not Found errors happening at your website, which means more of your visitors will leave happy! About the Author Dawn Gray can help you drive more traffic to your website. For other great articles on website promotion and a free email newsletter, visit her website at http://www.busymarketing.com. All articles published on EthanCote.com are copyrighted by their respective author. They are not to be taken without the consent of the author. |
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