Is there any real SEO benefit from simplifying my PHP urls to shorter, neater urls (with mod_rewrite)? I want to do this mostly to make my site look nicer - but if it's good for search engines, then all the better. www.domain.com/index.php?s=this+that VS www.domain.com/this+that Is there any reason NOT to make shorter URLs?
The shorter URLs are better for SEO and neatness of your site. There is nothing bad about having shorter URLs.
It is best to make your url looks static i.e. without the "?" signs. Previously there's known issue whereby search engines have trouble reading dynamic page. However, now search engine is more clever that it can read dynamic page. still, making your site url static may help in SEO and prevent hacking attempt (It can hide the underneath sever's software etc.)
From my experience NOT too short is better. Too long URL is may definite as a spam keywords on domain.
i like Short URLS, Search Engines Likes Short URL but it does not means that long PHP urls are bad in SEO... Look at the Digital Point URLS and its Ranking
No doubt short URLs are better for neatness as well as for crawlers, but the thing is URLs should contain the keyword for which that page is generated. This will be good for crawlers to read and for the visitors to understand when those come up in the search results.
Regardless of length, the URL should be descriptive. A look at the URL will tell us briefly the content of the page. In addition, search engines discourage dynamic urls. Therefore, do away with the ? stuff
Matt Cutts has made it very clear. .html static urls will always rank better then dynamic urls with 3 to 5 dynamic parameters.
Can you remember the url? if you can then it's a good thing. Remember that SEs are trying to give a good user experience. So if a user think's it's a horrible URL, the SE's probably will as well. Although the spiders are now more willing to crawl dynamic URLs, not all will. Google recently announced that it would start crawling urls with 'id' in the query string again. This doesn't mean it will crawl every url, or that other engines will follow suit. As an example, I pointed opti-spider at one of my sites recently. I 'forgot' it had a forum on it (phpbb2) that generated a new session id on every page view, carried in the url. The bot got caught in an endless loop. this example highlights why SE bots chose not to crawl dynamic URLs. Like i said - they're getting better, but it's one of those things that i say - 'design for the user' so shorten your url. go VEO style and the SEs will love you
I think it would be better if the URL is shorter so that it's more user-friendly and easy to be remembered by visitors.
I believe that users place more trust in URLs that can be read and tell them something about the structure of the site and the content they are about to view. I know I do.
well shorter URL's help each visitor to know what is on the page before the page appears.........now making it bigger will not help the visitors help that much ......and if you can think for a visitor then you are sure to get a positive response from search engine
Its not needed for short urls like that, but when people have long urls with lots of numbers in then it needs to be shortened eg mywebsitethatsellsproducts.com/product.php?8437584354353?session?2343534543?searchterm=newproducts getting rid of all the numbers and shotening to just /newproducts will give more importance for keyword to url matches in search engines
The long URL's can still be optomized and still recieve a good amount of SE traffic. But, the idea in SEO is to make your site as least confusing as possible for spiders/crawling. Shorter URL's naturally accomplish this idea. If you can remove unnecessary content without totally killing the look and feel of your site, then you should do it.
Using this one : www.domain.com/this+that Benefit : 1. Shorter than original 2. Friendly with SE 3. Easy to remember
OK - I agree that a long url containinng @./;131515 is not going to be good for SEO. but hows about one that contains further relavant info to the subject? this is a problem that come up when you have a site with a large amount of info that cannot be accessed straign from the homepage (as hard as we migth try). For Example is domain.com/this+that/01/02 Better than domain.com/this+that/that-and-this/this-also-with-that If the subsequent text is relavent to the seach term, could this infact be better for SEO, or does shortness rule!? Thanks Ross