Search Engine URL Choice

[Matt B]

www.site.com/product-name looks better than www.site.com/product-name.htm and www.site.com/product-name.php but what would rank highest in Search Engines???

 

I will use one of these by implementing a Mod ReWrite.

 

Matt.

[floridaflatlander]

With equal content they would all be the same rank. Worry about content, the name of your url is about 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 on the list of things to worry about.

After content make a good title for your page, get text inbound links "reviews of product-name" and "product name for sale". Get some big boys to link to you.

[QuickOldCar]

The extensions if are there would not make a difference,not having them is just for looks.

 

As long as you don't use url's like http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php?topic=332178.0

Use friendlier versions something like

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/re-search-engine-url-choice

or even

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php?topic=re-search-engine-url-choice

 

Using urls with the multiple get queries isn't that bad, and sometimes is better.

Using an example like this, the search engines can also pick up on the individual words for the GET's, which can help.

http://mysite.com/index.php?category=music&genre=rock&artist=bon-jovi&album=slippery-when-wet&song=you-give-love-a-bad-name

rather than a rewrite

http://mysite.com/music/rock/bon-jovi/slippery-when-wet/you-give-love-a-bad-name

Sure it looks all tidy, but lost some extra words that could have used.

 

But in the end the most important thing would be that your rewrite rules don't break the links.

 

[JonnoTheDev]

To be honest, Google doesn't actually care that much for the format of urls containing parameters like it used to.

As long as you don't use url's like http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php?topic=332178.0

The pages on this site are widely indexed. Do a site:www.phpfreaks.com/forums in Google, there are over 300,000 pages.

 

Nowadays, the main benefit of rewriting your urls is for the end user, and possibly to get a few keywords in there aswell. When a user does a search on Google, the url is displayed. A user is more likely to click on a link that contains keywords that they searched for.

 

The filename extension such as .php, .html, .aspx doesn't make the slightest bit of difference to a search engine.

[QuickOldCar]

The extensions if are there would not make a difference,not having them is just for looks.

 

I thought I said that.

 

Back to this.

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php?topic=332178.0

 

Me as a user don't like this as it makes no sense to anyone as to where it's taking you other than phpfreaks forum, or what the content might contain if the associated link description did not come along with it, like I just did when pasted it.

 

And although google has many of them, there are also many other search engines, and directories out there as well. Every little bit helps.

 

Just something for thought, if a url is scraped by something and there is no associated link description/title, then usually the url itself is used.

 

To me pretty urls always win in my book. I also agree to avoid upper case, and spaces as well, use a - or a _ instead.

 

I myself use the GET variables in my links for a search/navigation for desired settings and options, bookmarking and cache purposes.

[dreamwest]

I just copied wiki for my urls eg, http://site.com/videos/funny_videos_online

 

If your using smarty 3 is even simpler  http://site.com/videos/{$var|seo:'0'}