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posted in search engine optimization
on 14 Oct 06 | about news
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Search Engine Friendly URLs
Most websites in 2006 are 'dynamic' - their content is stored in a database, and updated in a 'backoffice' by the website owner, not the website developer. This is a sensible solution as it is the website owner who is actually the author of the content, and they can make instant changes to their content without having to go back to the developer everytime they want to make a minor amendment.
Dynamic websites bring up an issue with search engine optimization however. The issue lies in the way content is pulled from the database onto the web-page - via a number of parameters in the URL. For example:-
www.website.com/index.asp?p=234
This example is a simple one with just one parameter (p=234) - most have more than one parameter and be quite lengthy. In this example the 'p=234' might be referring to a webpage number in the database. This is only meaningful to the database and means nothing at all to a search engine - it gives no clue as to what the page is about. A much better URL would be something like :-
www.website.com/fashion-accessories/necklaces/pearl-necklace.htm
A search engine's number one priority is working out what category to put a webpage in - what is it about? Fashion accessories, necklaces, pearl necklace. The above URL is known as a 'static' URL. It doesn't take the content from a database.
This leaves us in a bit of quandry. Dynamic webpages are easy to update, but bad for search engines. Static webpages are great for search engines but you can't update them easily.
Well, there is a third way! We are not just website auditers, but also website developers - and have found a solution - as you will see by browsing this blog (which all the content is stored in a database) - we use a URL rewrite function so that we can create any URL we like, as long we pass the necessary parameters at the end of the URL.
We found a useful article on this issue here:-
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-Optimization-Help/Tools-for-SEO-Search-Engine-Friendly-URLs
Excerpt:-
 | Search engines prefer static URLs to dynamic URLs. This article explains the difference, tells why search engines don't like dynamic URLs, and shows you some ways to make your dynamic URLs look like static ones.
There are many reasons a webmaster may want to change the look and feel of a web page address. They may have dynamic URLs that need to be search engine-friendly, the page may have moved, the whole site may have moved to a new domain name, or they need to be better for users to view as interesting in the SERPs for more traffic and searchability. Whatever a webmaster’s reason for changing the way a URL is handled, there are definitely good ways to do this in regard to SEO, and then there are some bad ones, too.
In this article I want to look at a few ways you can utilize a few simple server tools and redirection elements to provide your site with static-looking search engine friendly URLs. |  |
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