Best SEO practice - URL canonization - what is the best url practice.

Nowadays, it's a lot easier to do specific url rewrites, especially with asp.net, to any degree one wants. But for SEO purposes, being that I can rewrite a querystring url to almost anything I want, what is best for SEO?

For instance, first thought that comes to mind is url based on a supposed folder structure, like this

mysite.com/mensshoes/sports/nike/airjordan.html

However, if done correctly, I can take the same url structure and do this

mysite.com/menshoes-sports-nike-airjordan.html

Soooo, what would be best for SEO?

 

In my opinon, the latter would be better. (but anyone out there could correct me if I am wrong)

It just seems like search engines like pages to be as close to the top of the root url as possible. Pages that are buried in a deep directory structure may not do as well. The second url looks like it is on the root directory.

Plus, having all of those keywords in the actual FILE NAME helps for SEO. It shows the search engines that your url is about all of those keywords.

Anyone feel differently?

 

Hmm I agree that search engines like top domains better. The more folder you go though, etc...the worse...at least thats my opionion, however, too many dashes can be a bad thing also, try splitting it up. Making it only go down one or two folders/directoires and then using the dashes to finish it. I think that would be the best thing to do. Just my suggestion...correct me if I'm wrong

 

I also forgot to mention another reason why I think the second option is better. Look at any blog on blogspot.com (owned by google). All of thier archive urls have the following form:

this-is-the-title-of-the-post.html

I figure if this is how google does it, this is how I want to do it.

 

I am also agree with David
Second one is better...

 

I think that both are good, however from a user point of view i prefer the second one.

 

However, search engines also like a heirarchy to explore. If your site structure has a natural heirarchy (which mensshoes/sports/nike clearly does), then keep to the folders. This way the SE bots can see that files within certain levels are grouped on a similar subject. Your folder names contain good keywords, and you don't have anyparameters after your filenames, so you are in a good position already.

Why not test this theory, and put half your pages in style and leave the other half in the current style? I.e. some 'mensshoes/sports/nike' and some 'mensshoes-sports-nike'. Then see which one performs better, or if they both do as well.

Cheers, Cryo.

 

• Length of the URL: no more than 3-5 words in your URL. According to Google’s Matt Cutts if there are more than 5 words…

[Google] algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.”
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Here is one more evidence in favor of short URL: recent research shows that short URLs within Google SERPs get clicked twice as often as long ones. So by sticking to short URLs you get both better rankings and better clickthrough.
Short URLs will also help in direct type ins of URLs (if anyone still uses that instead of Google).

• Dashes are better than underscores. Although Google has no individual preferences (meaning you won’t be penalizes for either of the versions), dashes are more preferable as Google “sees” each hyphened word as an individual one:

So if you have a url like word1_word2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for word1_word2 (which almost never happens). If you have a url like word1-word2, that page can be returned for the searches word1, word2, and even “word1 word2?.
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• Unlike a domain name, URL is case sensitive – meaning that if by any reason (your choice or CMS) you stick to a an upper-case version, remember that this can cause a few issues: people are most likely to link to the standard lower case one and you might both lose link juice and suffer from duplicate content issues.

• Moving to static URL structure: my (and actually not only my) favorite tactic is to use 301 redirect only for most powerful (in terms of linking and traffic) pages and leave all others to be handled via 404.

• If you hesitate if your URLs may be perceived as spammy, check out SEOMOZ URL Spam Detection Tool that will estimate:
  • spam words;
  • hyphens;
  • subdomain depth;
  • domain length;
  • digits.
• Mind your file extensions (i.e. don’t end your URLs with .exe) as they might prevent your pages from crawling.

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