SEO Tycoon

**Galaxian** · 01:27 AM

I am at a confusion point when I try to figure out which URL would be more effective for SEO.

news/category/id/article-title/
news/category/id-article-title/
news/category/id-article-title.html
news/category/id/article-title.html

Which is the best for seo? The id must be inclusive because that's how it's identified, to state the obvious.

Also - how long can a URL be before it's rejected and has no SEO value?

**chrishirst** · 07-10-2008, 06:59 AM

None of them, all of them, any of them, pick which makes more sense from a site management point of view.

Quote:

Also - how long can a URL be before it's rejected and has no SEO value?

any where from a single character to a lot.

the URL has very very little weight, look at it from a REAL users point of view.

**Galaxian** · 07-10-2008, 11:15 AM

Thanks for that however I still need both questions answering. I'm looking at it from a SEO point of view and I'm sure it'll be easier for REAL users as well.

**tehfincheh** · 07-10-2008, 11:46 AM

Well, depending on whether you can get rid of the news subfolder, I'd go with:

category/id-article-title.html

I know this is what the guys over at vBSEO do, and I've had good success with their product.

This forum uses that format too.

**chrishirst** · 07-10-2008, 12:50 PM

It really really really DOES NOT matter!

to all intents and purposes all 4 you have there are identical for the absolutely minute boost it might just have.

You have already spent FAR too much time on such minutae

the URL of a page is NOT of major concern to search engines.

**tehfincheh** · 07-10-2008, 01:31 PM

Quote:

the URL of a page is NOT of major concern to search engines.

So why do forums with vbSEO installed consistently outperform forums without it in the rankings?

Clearly there is some weight added to the URL, no matter how small.

**chrishirst** · 07-10-2008, 01:36 PM

Because vbSEO does more than rewrite URLs.

**Galaxian** · 07-10-2008, 02:18 PM

In my personal experience URL has quite a large impact upon search rankings.

Quote:

Well, depending on whether you can get rid of the news subfolder, I'd go with:

category/id-article-title.html

I know this is what the guys over at vBSEO do, and I've had good success with their product.

This forum uses that format too.

That's ideal, however I am using mod_rewrite and determine the news by /news

How would it determine other sections - perhaps I had one called tutorials? would it still be category/id-article-title.html ? I guess sites that use the category/id-article-title instead of section/category/id-article-title don't have other sections (or at least ones that need seo like that)

**VirtuosiMedia** · 07-10-2008, 02:47 PM

You might find these articles interesting/useful:

URL as UI -Jakob Nielson
URL as UI - Adam Darowski

**chrishirst** · 07-10-2008, 03:32 PM

Quote:

In my personal experience URL has quite a large impact upon search rankings

But have you REALLY tested it properly?

I have pages on a couple of different sites with made up words in the URLs, made up words in the form of two real words concatenated, so it was testing for two myths at the same time.
These "words" appear absolutely nowhere else on the page or in my navigation anchor text or anywhere on the sites.

For one of these "words" there is TWO pages on the Internet, one has the word in the body text the other, mine, the word is ONLY in the URL.
Guess which page shows up in ALL three major search engines? ...

Yep, you are probably right. NOT MY PAGE!

The only search engine that only shows my page is Ask, yep Ask! which in all the years I have been looking after or running sites has sent less than 1% of visitors IN TOTAL and absolute 0 in buyers.

Yahoo! has my page listed but places it second.
Google and MSN the page doesn't show up at all for that "word". The page is indexed in both because it shows up in site: searches.

There is only one point where the URL has any value, and that is when used as the anchor text for a link to the same page.

**chrishirst** · 07-10-2008, 03:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VirtuosiMedia

You might find these articles interesting/useful:

URL as UI -Jakob Nielson
URL as UI - Adam Darowski

Shock Horror

Quote:

* a domain name that is easy to remember and easy to spell
* short URLs
* easy-to-type URLs
* URLs that visualize the site structure
* URLs that are "hackable" to allow users to move to higher levels of the information architecture by hacking off the end of the URL
* persistent URLs that don't change

I agree with Jakob Neilson on something

or maybe ...

... Jakob Neilson agrees with me

The Adam Darowski article is good, and oddly enough the site architecture he proposes as being ideal, is exactly the IA I have used for a site I'm developing for an entertainment booking agency.

Another one worth reading is from the man who invented the World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee Cool URIs don't change

**bill benson** · 07-10-2008, 07:33 PM

I would rewrite domain/page?id=stuff to domain/kewords.html.

I primarily use AdWords and optimize campaign keywords ->ad->landing page. In my experience, keywords in the url / uri have been critical in AdWords placement and ad costs. I would think that extrapolates to natural SERPS as well.

**screenindia** · 07-11-2008, 04:14 AM

news/category/id/article-title.html

coz it follows the navigation.

**tehfincheh** · 07-11-2008, 06:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Because vbSEO does more than rewrite URLs.

And all those little things that it does adds up to one nice search engine friendly website.

**chrishirst** · 07-11-2008, 12:26 PM

exactly ALL the things it does not just rewriting URLs

**tehfincheh** · 07-11-2008, 01:10 PM

Rewriting URLs is a massive part of vbSEO's system.

It doesn't specifically call them "Search Engine Friendly URLs" for no reason.

**dave9713** · 01:23 PM

Well there not going to call them search unfriendly are they? All there doing is making it more descriptive (which is good).

URL's have very little weight, not even enough to think twice about.

When making reccomendations about URL's the main aim is to make them as descriptive and easy for the user to understand, also making sure the main term they want the page to rank for is in there. Not because it helps them rank, because search engines usually bold your search term even in the URL and this may help CTR.

Anyway I would choose this - news/category/id-article-title/

**tehfincheh** · 07-11-2008, 01:43 PM

From the Google Webmaster Guidelines:

"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."

I'm not suggesting a URL is the deciding factor in how you rank. But it's certainly worth getting it right and plugging your keywords from the start, rather than playing catch-up on your competition at a later date.

I've had much more luck getting search engine friendly URLs listed than I've had with database strings and queries.

The performance difference in the 4 URLs that the OP suggested is probably either tiny or nothing at all - since the URL is already search engine friendly. Any further tampering is for usability only.

But the difference between:

news/category/page.html

and...

index.php?news=politics&category=global&page=3

...is very significant.

**chrishirst** · 07-11-2008, 04:15 PM

And that is the reason that pseudo static URIs are called "Search Engine Friendly", because they remove one of the major barriers that can cause a site not to be indexed.
It is only the usual stupidity in mixing up cause and effect combined with an inherent behaviour to believe what "experts" say and write, rather than actually testing something to prove it one way or another that leads the masses to believe that static looking URIs are "better" for search engines.

However, don't take my word for it. Test it for yourself, it is not rocket science. You can all join in, anyone who doesn't know how to test this, I'll detail it for you

take maybe three words, lets say dark, apple & muffin (or pick three words of your own)

concatenate those words into a single entity, you can use hyphens or underscores if you so wish. I won't do that here because it may invalidate or distort the results or then again it may demonstrate that a word in the body of a page has more weight than a word in the URL.
run a search in the major SEs and take note of the results, try to get a concat word that has between 0 and 30 results.

create a page on any site you wish with the concatenated word as the page name or use the word as a folder name with an index page.

now these are the important bits:
Do NOT have the word ANYWHERE on any page, not as body text, not as anchor text, absolutely NOT in a title element.
link to the test page as often as you like, from as many pages as you like. Just use text that is anything other than that word.
Leave it a while to get indexed a few times, check your logs, analytics, set up a Google Alert or whatever.
Now you can search for that word in the SEs and keep checking for the word over a few weeks to see how long it takes for the page to drop out of the results. It may well appear for a short while or (not at all)

Let us know your findings.

**chrishirst** · 07-11-2008, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dave9713

Well there not going to call them search unfriendly are they? All there doing is making it more descriptive (which is good).

URL's have very little weight, not even enough to think twice about.

Exactly!

Use them for the benefit of structuring the Information Architecture.

Use them as suggested in the Adam Darowski article (post #9 by VirtuosiMedia).

Use them for the benefit of real human beings.

the SE "benefit" is approximately nil and is not worth considering.