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Search Engine Friendly URLs
Search engines prefer static URLs to dynamic URLs. This
article explains the difference, tells why search engines
don't like dynamic URLs, and shows you some ways to make
your dynamic URLs look like static ones.
There are many reasons a webmaster may want to change the
look and feel of a web page address. They may have dynamic
URLs that need to be search engine-friendly, the page may
have moved, the whole site may have moved to a new domain
name, or they need to be better for users to view as
interesting in the SERPs for more traffic and searchability.
Whatever a webmaster’s reasons for changing the way a URL is
handled, there are definitely good ways to do this in regard
to SEO, and then there are some bad ones, too.
In this article I want to look at a few ways you can utilize
a few simple server tools and redirection elements to
provide your site with static-looking search engine friendly
URLs.
Dynamic URLs
There are two types of URLs: dynamic and static. A dynamic
URL is a page address that results from the search of a
database-driven web site or the URL of a web site that runs
a script. In contrast to static URLs, in which the contents
of the web page stay the same unless the changes are
hard-coded into the HTML, dynamic URLs are generated from
specific queries to a site's database. The dynamic page is
basically only a template in which to display the results of
the database query. Instead of changing information in the
HTML code, the data is changed in the database.
Because of the way that dynamic URLs are created, they
sometimes create nightmares in the area of search engine
optimization (SEO). Search engines do not like to index
dynamic URLs. There are multiple reasons for this, one of
them being the non-standard characters like ?, &, %, =, and
others in the URL. Many times, anything after the character
is disregarded. For example, we may have URLs that look
something like this:
http://www.somesite.com/index.php?forumid&=120957w&=0404200620%search
http://www.somesite.com/index.php?forumid&=143212x&=0617200720%search
http://www.somesite.com/index.php?forumid&=236718b&=1127200420%search
Well, you get the idea. So if the part of the URL after the
first character is disregarded, the URLs look like this to a
search engine:
http://www.somesite.com/index.php
http://www.somesite.com/index.php
http://www.somesite.com/index.php
Any URL that is viewed this way to a search engine is going
to essentially be nothing more than a bunch of duplicate
URLs. And we all know how much search engines just love
duplicate URLs. (Okay, I was being sarcastic, as they
don’t). They would much rather index a URL that looks like
this:
http://www.somesite.com/index.php/seo_tools_page.html
In other areas, many times dynamic content is hard to
spider, especially if it is pulled from the database with
client-side code like JavaScript. If you can’t view the page
source and view the content of a web page, there is a very
good chance that a search engine spider will not be able to
either. While search engines are getting much better at
indexing dynamic URLs, they would still prefer static URLs.
So the challenge of dynamic URLs is clear: how do you keep
the dynamic site without compromising the indexing of your
pages with regard to SEO? By creating search engine-friendly
(SEF) URLs, that’s how! Let’s look at a few methods we want
to be familiar with in our quest for SEF URLs. Quite
frankly, it may sound like a daunting mission, but it’s
certainly not a mission impossible.
The first and most obvious way you could do this would be to
rename every page in your site to reflect a static URL with
keywords and make those pages static. If you have only a few
pages in your site, then you probably don’t need a dynamic
site in the first place, so this would be fine. But if you
have a dynamic site that produces hundreds or even thousands
of URLs, then doing this by hand is an unreasonable task to
undertake. So you will either need to figure out a different
way to accomplish the same thing, or find a tool to do it
for you.
Using .htaccess
In the next couple of items I’ll explain a bit further. The
.htaccess file is basically a set of instructions in a
simple text file with the extension .htaccess (there is no
file name) on the server to give parameters to the browser
when a request is made, put quite simply. More specifically,
it is a web server configuration file that contains commands
known by the server that tell the server how to behave in
certain instances. The place you would utilize mod_rewrite
or other redirect-type tools available to you will most
likely be in your .htaccess file.
Some of the most common uses of an htaccess file include the
capability to restrict access to certain files or
directories on the Internet (or intranet) through password
protection. Additionally htaccess is used to automatically
redirect users, ban or allow certain IP addresses access to
the server, and to call a custom designed 404 error page
rather than the standard error 404 file that usually appears
in your browser. Apache Web servers and other NCSA compliant
Web servers can use htaccess.
Most search engines, especially all major ones, will not
index pages with query strings because it may also indicate
that the content of the page is not static and it prevents
spamming to some extent. There's multiple ways to disguise
the query string though. The easiest and probably most used
involves mod_rewrite on Apache servers.
If your server is hosted on a Linux or Unix (*nix) server,
then you may have access to Apache’s module called
mod_rewrite. This is a nifty module indeed. What it does is
return to the browser a URL that appears to be the actual
web address of the page, when in fact the URL itself is not
being changed in any way. It’s more of a mirror effect.
When a request comes in to a server for the new static URL
through mod_rewrite, the Apache module redirects the URL
internally to the old, dynamic URL, while still appearing to
all the world, search engines included, as the static URL.
The web server compares the URL requested by the client with
the search pattern in the individual rules. For example,
when someone requests the SEF URL:
http://www.somesite.com/index-forumid/120957w/0404200620%search.htm
The server looks for and compares this static-looking URL to
what information is listed in the .htaccess file, such as:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule index-forumid (.*)/(.*)/(.*).htm$
index.php?forumid=$1&=$2&=$3
So what if you are on a Microsoft IIS server? Well, there is
another way to accomplish this using code, but it’s far more
painful to use than mod_rewrite. But it can certainly be
done. Unfortunately for the time being, that is outside the
scope of this article.
301 vs. 302 Redirects
Redirects can either be good or bad as far as SEF URLs are
concerned. 302 redirects are temporary redirects. These tell
a search engine spider that you’ve moved this page only
temporarily and to index it later when you have moved it to
a new home for good. While this may not be what you actually
had in mind to do, that’s how a search engine reads a 302
redirect. Use instead a 301 permanent redirect. It’s the 301
redirect that informs the search engine of the new URL and
to start indexing it instead of the old URL. 301 redirects
are also fairly seamless, so your visitors will also
probably not be aware of the move, and if they’ve bookmarked
a particular page, this will be especially helpful.
If you are not willing or don't know how to write a script
to reprogram your dynamic URLs into static ones, then you
are in luck, because there are many tools available on the
web that will help you produce the code you need to enable
you to create SEF URLs. You might want to consider a Windows
code generator if you are on an MS IIS server.
Incorporating Keywords
You may be thinking to yourself, “Well, okay, the rewritten
URL looks a bit better, but it doesn’t contain any keywords,
and certainly doesn’t mean anything to me or my visitors.
Now what?” Search engines are 66% to 85% more likely to list
your web page in its top ten results if you utilize a
keyword or phrase in the URL. So not only should you master
the techniques of creating SEF URLs, you should also try to
get a few highly targeted keywords placed in that SEF URL.
Now, we’re just making this whole thing too complicated,
right? Not necessarily. Keep in mind that it is up to you to
decide how your URL will ultimately look.
So while we are creating our SEF URL, we simply plant a few
of the keywords into the code for redirection or rewrite.
Let me show you a little bit of what I mean. Let’s say we
want our URL to look like this:
http://www.somesite.com/index.php/seo_tools_page.html
We’ll have to take our earlier code and expand it a bit
more, make it URL specific and cover multiple parameters. We
may just need to add a few tweaks to incorporate the
keywords where we want them. You will probably do better to
find information on the specific code to do this by doing a
search for mod_rewrite, as it is outside the scope of this
article. Essentially there are three key steps to any
mod_rewrite directive:
RewriteRule thisfile changedfilename
There are clearly more things that will go into all of this
that I haven’t covered, nor do I have the time and in the
case of mod_rewrite, the knowledge to do everything you need
to create the perfect SEF URLs. This article is not
necessarily intended to give you all the specific
instructions to utilize mod_rewrite completely effectively
on all of your pages, for example, but it’s a fair start.
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