Search Engine Friendly URL's on your Directory.

Do search engine friendly URL's make a difference when the search engines are crawling your site? or for the ranking or anything? or are the URL's more of a vanity thing?

Will a search engine do anything differently if it finds search engine friendly url's at your directory?

I have a website (not a directory) and it ranks well, gets traffic etc etc, but it has no search engine friendly url's, it has the ability to use them but my hosting for that particular site gets in the way of switching it on.

I know i cant compare the directories of mine against that site but do the SEF URL's on the directories really make any difference to the search engines?

 

But in my case of that other site doing quite well, against very established sites in its niche too does it still apply?

Ive even contemplated that if i switched hosting for that particular site so that i could make the urls sef, that it may affect the rankings etc negatively.

So then im thinking does it truely matter if ive got SEF urls on the directories?

What if that part of SEO changes in the future and a search engines stops taking into account keywords in a website URL?
To be honest i didn't know that keywords in a URL played much of a part, apart from the actual domain itself, but then others suggest that the domain holding a keyword carries little weight.

So if a keyword in a domain maybe holds little weight, then does it matter for the trailing part of that URL to have keywords in it?
I dont know myself

Would a search engine discriminate between two sites/directories when one has SEF URL and one doesn't.
Would that be fair? after all its not an option for everyone.

 

I think it will give your site the edge against others competing for those same keywords

 

I think maybe not though, im thinking that its unnecessary if a site appears to be doing well without it, im thinking its purely just for how it looks in the address bar.

How does a search engine decide that one format is better than the other?
Surely the page content is where the real meat is? the keywords should be found within the page content.

 

I had an ecommerce site that was doing really well and decided to change the URL from standard page id format to "SEO URL's" keyword rich urls, my SERP's took a drop for about a month while the SE's reindexed my site, but when they did the SERP's were greatly improved. If i had the chance to do it again i would change the URL format.

 

I think so, its one of the factors of directories and im comparing the directories against just one of my sites, your welcome to report the thread if you feel it is missplaced.

I think its another factor of the directories that dont hold any weight but il gladly back down if someone can show otherwise.

Dont people promote their directories a seach engine friendly, is that purelt because of the url's?
If so then their not really search engine friendly durectories then are they?

So it did even better than before the change? or could it of just seemed that way because of the temporary drop?

 

Its directories that promote themselves as search engine friendly.

 

sef in this context means that outgoing links are direct and no followed. Not a good idea to use this term in these circumstances.

 

Well im not so much asking in the sense that some people do here, the way some people get demanding and say show proof or shut up.
Im asking as i currently am not aware of how someone promotes their directory as search engine friendly, other than they have it switched on and it makes the urls's show differently.

Do you know anything else that im missing? i dont see what else a directory owner takes into account for this?

 

But we all know what people are usually reffering to with regards to SEF URL's.

Not the newer more current term since the changes that happend.

 

Mike thats all great pointers about other things on the directory but its not really specifically on what im talking about the URL's, what im saying is i see nothing more than the url displying different in the address bar, so im saying how does that make it a search engine frindly url?

Then in turn how does that make it a search engine friendly directory, with search engine friendly pages?

It doesn't, thas what im saying, its misunderstood, if im wrong on this then its cool, id much rather be corrected and learn.

But currently i think this whole search engine friendly thing has become misunderstood and i cannot see how it goes beyond the different looking url.

 

Im my opinion they are not search engine friendly urls, and to be sure that they somehow helped you more than if you didn't have it switched on you would have to strip out everything else that could be a factor on seo, ranking all that, which would not be practical.

Im saying its a visual change, not much else.

 

Another one solved.

 

In the past i have promoted my directories as search engine friendly, like including it in the description etc during submissions to other directories, but now i wont include any text stating anything like that as i dont and wont feel that it is right.

 

My site is hosted on yahoo hosting and it dose not allow .htaccess, so am in the same boat.

I don't think they are the only factor, but yes they are one of many factors that you have already listed!

some search engines don't crawl urls that has, things like "?" "=" "&" etc! [I have read this in google faqs somewhere but can't find out now!] but all major search engines do crawl those urls and gives high position in the serps, so i don't see any reason why search engine friendly urls should be a big factor.

but if your url is ending like: index.php?c=5
and another url is: php?id=weightloss
having text in the url dose helps in search engines. but if you build more link for the first url then the first one will go up in serps rather than the second one! both are dynamic urls and you can get text in urls even though your webhost don't allow htaccess.