Filenames, should index.php/html be changed

[lemmybrown]

http://www.seo-guy.com/seo-tutorial/search-engine-friendly-design.html Tells us that filenames are an important place to include keywords. I have been targeting my home page to be first-found but it looks like I'd be better off with a target page not called 'index'. I know I can alter the apache configuration on my server to default to a page of another name. It's not vital to me that the homepage is first-found though...

I think I've just answered my own question here but I'll submit this anyway, could someone correct me if I have anything wrong?

Thanks,

[jlknauff]

I would leave your index as is and use KW names on other pages. I think your index page has to be named index (there is one or two variants I think) or someone will just get a directory tree if they type in your URL without the filename.

[lemmybrown]

Thanks for your reply. I have some experience with server config, if you're using Apache server you can set the dafault page to whatever you name it in .htaccess

http://www.auburn.edu/oit/support/students/webpages/ts_change_default_page.php

I was wondering if this was worth doing from an SEO point of view?

[Thermit]

Your homepage title and inbound anchor text are much more important than the actual filename of your index page.

You should probably take jlknauff's advice.

[seo guy]

Or SEO Guy's and leave it. NAming your files (Especially for yahoo MSN these days) is important to attempt to get a main constituent of a kw phrase for that particular page in there, but renaming your index is completely unnecessary

[jlknauff]

[QUOTE=seo guy]Or SEO Guy's and leave it. NAming your files (Especially for yahoo MSN these days) is important to attempt to get a main constituent of a kw phrase for that particular page in there, but renaming your index is completely unnecessary[/QUOTE]
That was what I said ;)

[lemmybrown]

Thanks all, that's perfectly clear now.