Removing words of 2 words or less & numbers from urls

[rthie]

I just recently purchases a DIY WordPress design editor (Headway), which I really like because it gives me the flexibility to design a theme that is compatible with monetizing my sites with the proper ad placement. But here is the issue and my question;

Similar to other themes like ones in blogging underground and I also believe that your WordPress site that you use for training (dog allergy treatments), this theme arbitrarily removes all words of two words or less like; a, to, and also all numbers from urls when adding pages.

So my question is how does this affect search engine optimization when the exact keyword match is removed from the url when you add a page in Wordpress?

For example.

I was going to write an article with the keyword phrase;

1GB mp3 player

But, when I create the page in my new WordPress theme that I am now using, this is how the url will look;

/GB-mp-player or GB mp player

It arbitrarily removes the numbers 1 and 3.

So, I guess my question would be, how does this affect search engine optimization?

Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of getting long tail keywords and exact keyword matches in the url that your creating.

You have much more experience than I do in SEO, so I would appreciate some feedback on this.

[admin]

That theme looks good. I'd be curious what kind of sites you have built with it. PM me a url or 2 if you want.

While it is possible the keywords in the URL might help a slight bit in ranking - there is no question it in itself won't get the top ranking and is not as important as the keywords in the domain name.

ALSO your keywords are still in the title which is what really does the magic.

A few good links should make up for any boost lost.

I do use a plugin SEO Post Link on my sites to shorten URLs but I mainly do that to prevent LONG spammy out of control long URLS

http://www.maxblogpress.com/plugins/spl/

It has more options on what gets removed if anything (ie 2 characters or less etc. - on/off option for length of words deleted)

It can't hurt to have your keywords (unless OVER optimized) - but the URL itself missing short keywords is not something I ever lost sleep over.

I would tell the theme guy to consider making an option if there isn't already one to let you decide WHAT to truncate.

[Keywordcontentguy]

I just started learning how to use the Headway theme (I THINK it is going to be a great tool, but for a non-tech-wizard like me I think it has a fairly difficult learning curve) -- anyway, somewhere in the settings you can specify that you do not want those little words and numbers removed from the URL. When I run across that again as I am building my site, I will try to remember to come back here and post exactly where that setting control is.

[Keywordcontentguy]

I found where to set the post URL format on Headway:

Log in to your WP-Admin panel. In the left column, under "Headway" click on "Configuration." Inside the configuration panel, click on the tab at the top called "Search Engine Optimization." Go down the page to "SEO Slugs" and uncheck the boxes next to "Enable SEO Slug Clean-up" and "Remove Numbers from Slugs."

[admin]

I ended up buying the theme. It looks very good. I was hoping it'd be faster and easier to do custom things but it is very overwhelming! I guess that's good as you can do a lot of cool stuff. On the 25th they're coming out with a new version.

[Keywordcontentguy]

When I first started trying to learn how to use Headway I almost gave up in frustration, but a little distance and experimenting made things a lot easier. Their support forum is excellent, but their tutorials are painfully slow to get to the point. It took me forever to even FIND the support forum and tutorials, so let me know if you haven't found them yet and I will post the route to get there.

[admin]

Thanks! I found a ton of stuff online showing how to do things. You;re right - they dwell on a lot of the basic stuff until they get to the real design issues to make the themes function better. BUT I will say - I do like the way they have that visual editor and can do stuff like FLUID HEADERS which was one of the missing things I had trouble finding help for.

http://www.headwayvideos.com/customizin ... -wordpress

http://vimeo.com/27410328

Very cool!