After thinking for a long time I always wondered whether or not it mattered if a site had clean url's or not. For example: Normal url: www.yourwebsite.com/1023901023 Clean url: www.yourwebsite.com/pagetitle I am curious to know if this actually makes a difference when it all comes down to it.. Off the top of my head I can think of two sites that don't use it and seem perfectly fine when it comes to SEO. DigitalPoint Forums - Dont use any forum of clean url method such as vbseo. Drupal - links aren't named after the page name in a normal installation of it. I could name many more yet I just want to know how important it really is
Vital? Mmmmm...no. Extremely helpful? YES. It's not like you're penalized for not having search engine friendly URL's, but having them can help, and in my opinion, you want every bit of boost you can get. Ideal URL's have the page title or relevant keywords (where it makes sense) separated by hyphens. Example: http://www.yoursite.com/your-page-title.php or http://www.yoursite.com/your-page-title It does help.
Ive been using them on most my sites just wasn't sure if it was truly giving me any type of boost. But Neo, what your saying does make sense =)
As WebGeek said, they help, but they're certainly not vital, if you can add them in easily on your site go ahead and do it, if not then it's not really worth sweating over.
Like for example people that say comments like these... where is the proof? I mean a few people my write about it on their blogs but doesn't make it true. I'm sure it helps a bit just not as much as people make it out to be. Sorry seomemory im not trying to call you out =)