The position of keywords in your website’s URL’s has always been a bit of a grey area, but Google’s Matt Cutts recently clarified the situation. He was asked whether the position of keywords in a URL has any effect on one’s Google ranking? Matt has graciously shared his answers in a video for all of us to view.

Here is an example of what the question is asking:

Is example.com/keyword/London any better than example.com/London/keyword when it comes to ranking in Google?

You can check out Matt’s video here:

Effectively, Matt says that webmaster shouldn’t obsess about the order of the words but he said having keywords in the URL does help a little bit. He warned that webmasters shouldn’t go stuffing keywords in the URL as this just looks spammy to users. He also suggests keeping the number of keywords in a URL to a minimum of 4 or 5.

Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land took this query a bit further and asked Matt directly to clarify his answer in a few specific situations – with both existing and new websites.

Firstly, Barry asked Matt if webmaster should go back to their existing sites and change URLs without keywords to include keywords in them.

If you’ve got an existing solution that works for you, it’s not really worth going back to change your urls. It may worth considering when you’re doing a new site.

Next, Matt was asked if all news sites should make sure to have keywords in the URL.

It makes sense if a) it’s easy for you to do in your content management system, and b) the keywords are useful and descriptive–definitely don’t overdo it.

So if you’re worried about the keywords in your URL, take the advice straight from the Google master and “don’t obsess” over it. Hope this advice helps! If you have any feedback, feel free to let us know in the comments section below.