I just started using Associate O-Matic and I was wondering, from the people who have been using it a while, which Mod-Rewrite option from the admin section do you use? I was going to use the option where the product name is in the URL but I thought that might look to spammy and probably wouldn't make a big difference to the SE's. Does anyone have a different experience?
hope this helps... .htaccess header.php inside Aom -> Admin menu -> Searcg Engine Settings .. inside Aom -> Admin menu -> Categories / Subcategories inside aom -> admin menu -> site header html The .htaccess file will create the .html files, which are a function of your category names. Dissect header.php, and edit it as necessary. See what everything looks like by seeing my store : http://www.university-bookstore.org
I see how to do it but even in your example the URL's are long and "spammy" looking for example: http://www.university-bookstore.org...son_Wesley_Professional_Computing_Series.html the other option would by turning the option "URL With Name" to NO in the admin section that would produce a URL that looks like this: http://www.university-bookstore.org/books-1-465600-0201633612.html I guess what I was originally trying to ask does it make a big difference from an SE standpoint or is it just personal preference? Does it make a difference from a marketing standpoint when the user looks at the URL are they more likely to click the buy button with a link like the long one above or do they not even look at it so it doesn't even matter.
from buyers point of view I don't think url length makes much difference, look at amazon's url for example. But from seo point of view yes it matters: shorter the url more weight you get for your keywords.
I believe from Google's point of view dashes in the html are considered the same as /, an experiment can proove that. Check mine here: site:scienceblog.com/store/21 (type this in google search) Note that it will return all sorts of URLS starting with 21 even though that's part of the name. Now if you try searching for this: site:scienceblog.com/store/21-1 it will not return a single result (just to show that it's not just a match inside the url) But if you type this: site:scienceblog.com/store/21-13404851 it brings 1 page.
If you are running adsense, descriptive urls will produce more targeted ads. domain.com/blue-yellow-widgets.html will produce adsense targeted to blue and yellow widgets, much more than domain.com/1053.html will