Hi, For SEO purposes can someone tell me if there is any difference between directories that have page names like "business.asp?step=2&id=27&pstring=12,27" and directories which just have names like "business/finance.asp". I've seen directories using both and all the pages seem to get indexed. Does it make a difference? Cheers
You're talking about URLs and that makes a lot of difference. Search engines look at URL names and if they are more relevant to the search being done, they will display higher. URLs with queries in them such as business.asp?xx=xx&blah=blah are no where near as good as /business/blah/blah/. Search engines don't really like queries as much.
Thanks for the reply. So it won't help the directory get ranked higher but all of the individual pages will still be indexed and treated as seperate pages. Also the links on those pages will count the same?
Search engines have evolved so that they now index those pages that don't use mod rewrite. A few years ago this was not the case and URLs with crazy characters like "&" and "?" were not easily indexed. That being said, I would mod rewrite the URLs anyway just to be sure.
Correct, they will still index them, but they won't show up nearly as high as other pages that have keyword values in the URL.
if you use url parameters within the internal pages then your site will be termed as NOT search friendly. Here are the problems which you will face if you use non search friendly pages. 1. Google does index these page, but ONLY if yours have relevant content. I had some pages indexed, but later after 5-6 months were removed from index. 2. Yahoo will not index your pages. (only very few pages will get indexed) To fix around this problem.. 1. Use MOD REWRITE for URL rewriting so that pages are search friendly 2. Use keyword in your URLs so that it would be more effection for SERPS than just having numbers in the URL Good Luck
Thanks for the replies everyone. I appreciate the advice. Can anybody tell me more about a "MOD REWRITE"? Is it easy to do and can it be done on any website etc etc?