Which URL is More Effective?

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by twalters84, Mar 8, 2009.

  1. #1
    Hey guys,

    Which URL do you think is more effective?

    example.com/view-city.cfm?city=Cumberland&state=Maryland

    example.com/Maryland/Cumberland.cfm

    example.com/US/Maryland/Cumberland.cfm

    example.com/US/Maryland/AlleganyCounty/Cumberland.cfm

    You get the idea.

    Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

    Sincerely,
    Travis walters
     
    twalters84, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  2. dmi

    dmi Well-Known Member

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    #2
    The last one.
     
    dmi, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  3. arramuse

    arramuse Active Member

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    #3
    I think this URL "example.com/US/Maryland/AlleganyCounty/Cumberland.cfm"

    Caused this URL is rich of Keywords ;)
     
    arramuse, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  4. SuccessGuru

    SuccessGuru Active Member

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    #4
    shorter is more effective than long
     
    SuccessGuru, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  5. twalters84

    twalters84 Peon

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    #5
    Hey there,

    Thanks for the prompt response.

    If example.com is PR 5, each subdirectory would get -1 PR wouldnt it?

    So the AlleganyCounty subdirectory would have PR2?

    I do like the last one the best just because all those keywords are there.

    Guess I will have to run a script to make a ton of directories heh.. fun :)

    Sincerely,
    Travis Walters
     
    twalters84, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  6. Thotyuang

    Thotyuang Peon

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    #6
    I think the second one.
     
    Thotyuang, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  7. GeeOne

    GeeOne Well-Known Member

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    #7
    I am also on that.
     
    GeeOne, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  8. kiduka

    kiduka Peon

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    #8
    Yeah this url will definetly help you in terms of SEO
     
    kiduka, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  9. suhaana@maxinspire.co.in

    suhaana@maxinspire.co.in Peon

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    #9
    All the URL is bad ! I saw there is capitalization! avoid it. Dont use capital letter to make URL it can kill you !

    @ first URL
    If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
     
  10. anildewani

    anildewani Peon

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    #10
    I would rather tell you to go for the second one ;)
     
    anildewani, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  11. stephen082

    stephen082 Active Member

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    #11
    I also agree with the last option....
     
    stephen082, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  12. rena

    rena Peon

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    #12
    As dynamic site can say example.com/view-city.cfm?city=Cumberland&state=Maryland is the best URl
     
    rena, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  13. web_dks

    web_dks Banned

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    #13
    I think the thried one
     
    web_dks, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  14. vengatowen

    vengatowen Well-Known Member

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    #14
    vengatowen, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  15. mrdo

    mrdo Well-Known Member

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    #15
    I chose the last, best for Seo :D
     
    mrdo, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  16. SEOVancouver

    SEOVancouver Peon

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    #16
    The last URL would be the best if your visitors frequently use the term 'Allegany County' to search with. If most of your searches come from keywords such as PRODUCT Cumberland, including 'Allegany County' in the URL is diluting the value of your more important keyword, Cumberland.
     
    SEOVancouver, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  17. Canonical

    Canonical Well-Known Member

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    #17
    First of all, every one of those URLs are poor choices. NEVER use mixed case URLs. A lot of search engines are case sensitive. I recommend ALL of your URLs be lower case. If your webserver receives a request for a URL that is NOT lower case then 301 redirect the request to the a lower case version of the URL.

    Keyword rich URLs are considered in Google's algorithm, but they have very little overall effect to your ranking for a particular keyword. It is a 'fine tuning' on-page SEO technique. You can get much more bang for your buck (or time) by worrying about things like having excellent <title>, <h1>, <h2> elements... good content... a good information architecture with a clean navigation system using good link text for interlinking between pages.

    There is no 'right' answer to the original posters question... I would say that obviously it would be better to NOT use query string parameters... Query string parameters present issues to a lot of search engines. Google can handle long URLs with multiple query string parameters, but a lot of engines will ignore everything after the 2nd or 3rd query string.

    Also which URL would be best depends on which keyword phrase you are trying to make the page rank for... example.com/Maryland/Cumberland.cfm might be best if you want to rank for "Cumberland Maryland".

    Using URLs like example.com/US/Maryland/AlleganyCounty/Cumberland.cfm implies several things. It means you're going to have a page about the US (example.com/US/), you're going to have a page about Maryland (example.com/US/Maryland/), a page about Allegany County in Maryland (example.com/US/Maryland/AlleganyCounty/), AND a page about Cumberland in Allegany Count in Maryland (example.com/US/Maryland/AlleganyCounty/Cumberland.cfm).

    Websites frequently use long URLs like this and then fail to implement pages at each of the sub-URLs... This is a TERRIBLE user experience. A lot of users navigate around the site by chopping off sections of the URL. So if they are at example.com/US/Maryland/AlleganyCounty/Cumberland.cfm and they want to see the county page, they will chop off "Cumberland.cfm" in their browser address bar. If you don't have a page their your server is likely going to return a 403 Permission Denied error page.
     
    Canonical, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  18. twalters84

    twalters84 Peon

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    #18
    Hey there,

    I never heard that capitalization is bad for crawlers. Does these crawlers income Google and Yahoo? I could care less about smaller browsers as I only want to deal with the big boys :)

    Having said that, it wouldnt be too difficult to do something like...

    example.com/us/maryland/allegany-county/cumberland.cfm

    I do realize that there are other elements such as title, h1, h2, etc. that are more important. However, to get to the top I want to use whatever means I can to gain that edge with SEO.

    I do plan to have a page at each subdirectory - that is for each state, county, and city.

    example.com/us/maryland/index.cfm (state page)
    example.com/us/maryland/allegany-county/ (county page)
    example.com/us/maryland/allegany-county/cumberland.cfm (city page)

    I was not planning on having a country page but I wanted that there incase I extend the website in the future to other countries.

    Sincerely,
    Travis Walters
     
    twalters84, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  19. Darkness

    Darkness Peon

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    #19
    example.com/US/Maryland/AlleganyCounty/Cumberland.cfm
    is good for search engines,
    example.com/Maryland/Cumberland.cfm
    is good for users.
     
    Darkness, Mar 8, 2009 IP
  20. Canonical

    Canonical Well-Known Member

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    #20
    You can leave US in the URL without have a page there... Simply put a 301 redirect in place so that if someone requests example.com/us or example.com/us/ that they are 301 redirected to your home page. Later if you decide to create a example.com/us/ page then simply remove the 301. Or you can just let the user see your 403 error page, but I think that is a poor user experience.
     
    Canonical, Mar 8, 2009 IP