SEO friendly URLS

[RichardRotterdam]

I am not a big fan of creating urls that only contain text using mod rewrite

 

example

www.someshop.com/hardware/computers/desktop.html

instead of

www.someshop.com/product_id=265

 

however some SEO companties claim that having no numbers in your url will lead to better results.

 

is this really that true? I mean yeah one of the larger php sites wikipedia does exactly this. but this means you will have to do your queries text based instead of using number.

 

[JonnoTheDev]

This is correct.

You could have a lookup array that maps the rewritten urls to the product id as the array key. From the rewritten url you can find the id to perform your database query.

[RalphOrange]

Another option may be using a combination of Text and Numbers.

 

ex. T323 Desktop

 

I think compared to just numbers, this will defintely improve your seo.

[cooldude832]

which is better

http://www.mysite.com/items/fishingpole/

or

http://www.mysite.com/items/fishingpole.php (or .html or .htm etc.)

[JonnoTheDev]

Better for what?

If you are talking about better for Google results then it totally depends on their current algorithm that often changes in how it will interprit the url in order to rank. In my opinion there is no difference between the two.

[RalphOrange]

I agree with Neil...

[exseven]

Bit late my comment and my apologies if I say something that is already mentioned somewhere else as I hope you find it relevant,... 

 

I know from experience it's not about numbers in general. We use in our URL page naming  numbers a lot, as the name of the files refers in our case to an actual model name,which contains a number.

 

It is more that you need to make sure:

• you do not use too many parameters in your URL. The maximum that seems to be excepted is 2 parameters.
  
• Do not use too general parameters, like ID will be ignored by Google it thinks it's a session ID.
  
• Although not all experts agree on this; you should not use _ in the naming of your files or media like images, it is better to use - .
  
• The naming should be inline with what the page talks about, so basically the title(s) of the document
  
• And last but not least even the type of domain (.com, .org, etc...) has influence on the ranking.
  

 

You can find a lot of useful info here:

http://www.googlerank.com/ranking/Ebook/urlwords.html

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

 

[sKunKbad]

Although not all experts agree on this; you should not use _ in the naming of your files or media like images, it is better to use - .

 

I had never heard this before. Thanks for posting.

[TheFilmGod]

Although not all experts agree on this; you should not use _ in the naming of your files or media like images, it is better to use - .

 

.. Your first source completely contradicts your assumption.

 

3. Old word separator [-] have the same effectiveness than [_] . Then, with stemming technology, multiple words don't need to be divided at all: pages like "cold-mountain.html" , "cold_mountain.html" and "coldmountain.html" share the same chances to be high ranked or not be ranked at all.

[exseven]

Yes I know that's why I say not all people agree on it but the thing is that the second one works for Google so that's why I follow his advise rather then the other one.

[dogfighter]

Since I don't know enough about PHP to contribute anything but noob questions in the other forums, perhaps I can do some good here

 

Google has been consistently inconsistent in their stance on rewritten URLs. Just today, in fact, there was a post on Search Engine Land about Google now saying not to rewrite URLs.

 

http://searchengineland.com/080923-090542.php

 

I for one will continue to rewrite. I think one of the smartest things Apple did with their website was to make the url structure intuitive and logical. If I asked you to use only your address bar to instantly navigate to Apple's Macbook Pro page, you'd probably be able to do it on the first try. Plus, your display url is 1/4 of your on-page real estate in a standard organic search engine listing.

 

Google isn't in the marketing business, I am. And until they develop a genuine concern for my bottom line, I'll use them to market as I see fit

[JeremyMorgan]

There are a few different reasons for using rewritten urls.

 

1. Cleaner look

2. Easier Navigation

3. Higher Click Thru Rates

4. Better SEO (theory)

 

The primary reason for doing it should be organization, and clean looks. There has been no proof that static urls do better than dynamic ones. In fact, quite frequently I see dynamic urls in top search positions. One obvious benefit when using my-keywords-33.htm rather than id=33 is being able to stuff keywords in the filename. But overall, if it matters in the algorithm, I don't think it matters much.

 

Do what works for you. Remember that using text searches can be much slower on high traffic sites.

[taolaga]

SEo friendly is important on SEO

Try use rewrite mod for you link

[JeremyMorgan]

I for one will continue to rewrite. I think one of the smartest things Apple did with their website was to make the url structure intuitive and logical. If I asked you to use only your address bar to instantly navigate to Apple's Macbook Pro page, you'd probably be able to do it on the first try. Plus, your display url is 1/4 of your on-page real estate in a standard organic search engine listing.

 

Google isn't in the marketing business, I am. And until they develop a genuine concern for my bottom line, I'll use them to market as I see fit

 

I agree with this statement. Rewritten URLs look much better, and as you mentioned, if you use them for navigation you can empower the user even more. Granted the majority of your audience will not likely do this, but it's a really nice bonus for those who do.

 

I will continue to use rewriting, it's not like its a really difficult or time consuming thing to implement.

[vardis]

My eye would rather see words rather than numbers so you can't blame a search engine for wanting the same.

[creative182002]

As we all know Google bot reads the text better than the any other thing over the Internet. The Text based URLs are crawled by the Google easily and more efficiently as compared to any other URL having a structure of query string in it. But from this we does not mean that the dynamic links do not appear well on the Google. Most of the top ranking websites in the Google have dynamic structure of the URL. However if you are using static URLs you can have keyword optimization with the help of your URLs as well. As you can use Keywords in your URLs as well. This can help in boosting up your SEO Ranking

[TheFilmGod]

The only advantage in using rewritten urls is that you can inflate the url with keywords. Google does not rank websites better simply because off url schemes. This is clearly stated on Google's webmaster guidelines.

 

Never use "id=..."! Google considers it as an id session and will not cache it.