Lately we have been talking to a lot of companies about how to get more bang for their buck from their website.  One of the easiest ways to do this (assuming your website is in a state that you actually WANT to drive traffic to it) is some simple SEO.  In doing a brief overview of many, many websites, there has been one thread that is so overwhelmingly pervasive, that I wanted to share it here.  That is the issue of URL structure.

If you want to make sure that people find what you have on your site, make the URL tell them what it is.  For example, if you have a recipe for Pecan Pie, don’t put it on your http://www.mycompany.com/daily_recipe location.  Put it on http://www.mycompany.com/recipe/pecan_pie.  Have an article on improving battery life?  Put in in a URL that has improve_battery_life as part of it and you will see far more hits.  It’s amazing how easy this is to do, and yet it is by far the most common mistake I have seen on sites.

This morning, as a stream of Twitters went flying through my IM client, I noticed that Phil801 had mentioned a live video feed. I saw a few of the SLC Twitter crew comment on the quality, so I clicked through to check it out. Apparently, Phil801 had helped setup a Politic 2.0 and was broadcasting a live video feed conversation with Congressman Chris Cannon. Immediately upon viewing, I recognized the shape of a bald head sitting front and center:

I continued watching to confirm my suspicion when I caught this:

Yup. It was none other than our own Steve Spencer, President of Twelve Horses. Weird how Twitter led me to Steve. I’m not sure if this is the power of online social networking or just working to make the world even smaller.