Just read this in another forum, 2 guys arguing, one believes SEF url's are better than dynamic urls for SEO purposes and the other says it makes no difference. This is the reasoning by the guy who claims SEF's haven't been proven. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ People harp on about urls without having the most basic clue as to what difference they make. The only proven benefit from having keywords in your url is the human recognition angle. Not one experiment has managed to demonstrate that Google places any weight on keywords in urls. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The benefit he refers to is the fact that the SEF in the search results is better for human recognition: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Here's a hint - it stands out in the search results, in bold green. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ So according to this poster the only benefit is for the searcher because he can recognize what the search results refer to. It if was a dynamic url with a lot of characters the searcher might not recognize what the search result is for! You'd think the title and meta descriptions in the search results would be enough! It doesn't help with a website's SEO program, just the display of search results! I couldn't stop laughing when I read this. I guess we could get the SEO industry to rename search engine friendly url's to something like 'human recognition' url's or 'easy to understand and read' url's. Yeah that's better, let's have ETUAR friendly url's But seriously, have I gone mad and woken up in a parallel universe where all my mod rewrites for SEF has been in vain. Is there any truth is this guy's madness!!!
Google actually doesn't put MUCH importance to SEF urls. He is partially right and there is not much to laugh except the human recognition thing. Lol. As an example, if you search for a term with which Digital point has an exact title thread on, you'll see that result being on number one or two compared to one who used search engine friendly urls in their domain. It really depends on quality in terms of google.
I agree. The only time it probably has an impact is if the search results are small in number, and the pages that show up have no links pointing to them. Then search engines will look for keywords in the URL's to help rank the pages, but even then the page title/content will have more impact on the ranking than the URL.
Search engines go to great efforts to give relevant search results. One of the best ways for you to describe the main theme of your web page is by putting the main keyword(s) in the URL. In my opinion, it is unthinkable that the search engines would give no weight to the URL keywords, since any savvy webmaster knows that the keyword-in-URL strategy is one of the easiest ways to describe the precise nature of the page to Google and the other SEs.