Hello thereI have just finished the 2nd version of the pagination function on one of my sites,

I changed URLs like this:
h-tp://www.mydomain.com/script.php?var1=99&var2=99
to:
h-tp://www.mydomain.com/script.php?vars=99s99



- Is it a good idea??
- Will I have more pages indexed??


Please reply

Thanks in advance

It wont make much difference.

Thanx you stOx

but are you sure that decreasing the number of parameters from 2 to 1 wont make much difference?

You will see differences if you enable mod_rewrite (Apache) and have addresses like this:

http://www.mydomain.com/script/99/99.php

That's the most SE friendly type of URL I'm aware of.

You should be fine with 2 parameters, though if you can get away with one I'd go with that one. If you already are using the two paramters and planning on redirecting to the new one parameter url I'm not sure it's worth the time. If you're just putting the site up and nothing's been indexed yet I'd probably go with the one parameter url.

But search engines shouldn't have any problem with the second paramter. I'd stay away from paramters with ID in them somewhere and I'd probably limit them to three at most, but I wouldn't worry about the two parameter url you have above.

change your URIs to "SE friendly" ones on an existing ranking site and the only difference you will see is complete disruption to your rankings and SE traffic for 3 to 6 months.

so called "SE friendly URIs" will make little to no difference for SE ranking and conversion. They may make a difference if you have more than 3 parameters in the page address and there are problems getting the site crawled. Other than that leave well alone on an existing site.

It doesnt matter how long urls are, as long it's descriptive. URLs has been one of the most effective SEO today. Apparently, you have to do it on the start of your site, not when your site's been indexed alot, Be sure to take off the old urls or you'll get tons of dups.

I think there are benefits to search friendly urls, but I'd hardly call them the most effective SEO. I agree with Chris that if you already have your pages indexed there's no real need to switch to new urls unless you have some other reason for the switch.

I do think a search friendly url can lead to higher click through when the page shows up in search results and I do think it will help with anchor text as people will at times use your url as the anchor text when they link to you.

If you have too many parameters and are having trouble getting indexed then you may want to change. And if I were starting a new site I would go with search friendly urls. But I wouldn't start redirecting all my urls to go from 2 parameters to 1 paramter.

j4s0n if search friendly urls are so effective why is it that many of the top SEOs in the industry don't use them? It can have benefits, but it's by no means a panacea for rankng well.