Content with Style - Comments on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Content with Style - Comment #1 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:15:18 +0000

Nice article! The effect of nice URL’s in search engines is indeed absolutely amazing. It’s one of the best instant-result SEO actions one can possibly perform on a site.

I actually demonstrated mod_rewrite during one of the Linux courses I’m delivering and the students were amazed with how easy it is to use mod_rewrite.

Content with Style - Comment #2 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:31:22 +0000

Hi

Do you have that code for ASP.Net too?

Content with Style - Comment #3 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 11:59:47 +0000

On the ASP.NET front we (work) have just started using aspRedirector from www.intesoft.co.uk/aspRedirector/ – it allows for basically try and catch statements to be added to the web.config file.

I’ve personally had quite a bit of luck using a different, PHP based, method too. Another Sitepoint plug infact – using the Pathvars class from The PHP Anthology book.

I had a rambling stab (www.morethanseven.net/weblog/40) at writing some of it down but mine was lets say less clear, consise and more err, error prone that this article.

Content with Style - Comment #4 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:04:45 +0000

Henrik: Sadly I have no real knowledge of .Net, but from a quick read this article sounds like an easy possibility. The configuration of the rewrite engine is XML, very neat me thinks!

Content with Style - Comment #5 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 05:01:33 +0000

I remember trying to figure out the .htaccess files after enabling clean URLs in a Wordpress install and begin absolutely baffled. Nicely explained Pascal!

Keywords in URLs are given a LOT of weight by the current Google algorithm so this is a great technique for improving organic search engine listings… You just need to look at the URLs of the top 10 sites next time you try to buy some consumer electronics online to see proof of this.

Content with Style - Comment #6 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 12:39:57 +0000

Nice article. Always nice to find a new way to construct your URLs.

A while back I wrote something on the same subject, but with a different approach.

Content with Style - Comment #7 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 03:31:21 +0000

Thanks Valentin, I was looking into Force-Type myself. But then I prefer mod_rewrite for it’s sophisticated possibilities to exclude certain folders, or just folders, or physically existing files.

Just to give you a quick example: Imagine a CMS that, in order to save server load, could export the file output. You actually could run both, static files and dynamic output, seamlessly working together by using the condition

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f

All requests that don’t point to an existing file get rewritten to the CMS instead of throwing a 404.

This obviously goes far beyond the possibilites of Force-Type and opens completely new approaches on how to structure an application.

Content with Style - Comment #8 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 10:07:34 +0000

Pascal, good article and full of useful links, thanks.

Just one point: does the `id` in the URL add some value? I think not, so if the slug is a field in the database, why use it to select the row (article)?.

By the way, this very page is accesible through

http://www.contentwithstyle.co.uk/Articles/64/~
 clean-urls-for-a-better-search-engine-ranking/

http://www.contentwithstyle.co.uk/Articles/64/

http://www.contentwithstyle.co.uk/Articles/64/any-random-string/

Content with Style - Comment #9 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 15:05:12 +0000

choan: Well spotted, an indeed this (old beta) version of textpattern wasn’t able to deal with clean URLs and got tweaked by me in a quick may. Same goes for the example. By all means this is NOT an ideal URL. But it still is way better than query string data.
The keywords out in are actually only SEO, nothing else. For the application logic they don’t matter at all.
Actually the article will be reachable with GET parameter as well, in order to keep the old links to the site working. So try

http://www.contentwithstyle.co.uk/?id=64

And you’ll get here as well. which isn’t a bad thing, is it?

Content with Style - Comment #10 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 02:28:41 +0000

Does this play nice with search engine duplicate content penalties? Surely having the same page available via 4 different URLs counts as duplicates?

All it takes is someone to link to you with the “wrong” URL… unless I’m missing something? Using robots.txt to exclude old URL patterns perhaps?

Content with Style - Comment #11 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 07:03:49 +0000

Mark, this is a good point. And a good idea to deal with this. However, I can only repeat that the script example is meant as an example, not as the ultimate solution. Same goes for this site. I think you should keep in mind that CwS works with a heavily tweaked textpattern beta version. The site is, unlike a well planned project, “grown organically” and there’s hell of a lot to be improved.

Content with Style - Comment #12 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 08:03:38 +0000

Regarding the “duplicate content penalties”:

I’m not sure that they are black-and-white strict in that sense, and in the case of URL rewriting, where’s the benefit for yourself setting up this duplicate? Your clicks and links get devided between 2 identical pages, so would be your search engine ranking. That’s penalty enough, no?
in this extensive search engine ranking doc duplication is mentioned a couple of times, our case with moderate importance, but, think about what else dilutes your “unique” page: leaving out the “www.” is a whole duplicate set of your website (Pascal just fixed that in the RSS), session keys offer millions of duplicates.
This very obvious problem makes me think that a penalty is only given when it’s a more severe problem.
I believe that when it comes to a decision like this, the user should come before the search engine. Let them have 2 urls, or how many they’d like to have. What’s to do on our side is to redirect them to the desired url.

Content with Style - Comment #13 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 10:23:22 +0000

Thanks for your responses guys, I tend to agree – users have to come first, but if you can avoid penalties for dupe content then…

The www.domain.com vs domain.com issue is also a good point, but a) it’s easy to redirect one to the other and b) search engines would have an easier time catering for this example of duplication than, say a URL like /events/id/32 vs /events.asp?id=32 vs /events/my_event_title.html.

I guess the upshot is, tough unless you’re going to robots.txt the URL formats you don’t want spiders to pick up on – which as I understand it means listing every URL (including parameters) in robots.txt.

Content with Style - Comment #14 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 08:57:57 +0000

Watch this space, I’m going to investigate and gather a couple of thoughts on how to rewrite unwanted URLs into wanted URLs … promised!

Content with Style - Comment #15 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 22:30:41 +0000

Even though it might be good for some search engines at the present. Personally, I don’t think this is a good solution for the long term because it’s non-standard and when you move server, have to set it up all the customizations again. Search engines should be able to (or they would be) parse pages from the page regardless of URL format.

Content with Style - Comment #16 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 05:06:53 +0000

Son, I don’t agree here … there is actually a w3c recommendation that suggests how an ideal URL should look like.
A module that is as common as mod_rewrite should be available at most hosting companies and if you move to servers where you can do the configuration yourself it’s even more easy to set up.
The effort to support accessible and legible URL schemes rather than cryptical querystrings is a minor price to pay, I reckon.
Another thing to say is that “should be able” implies that they aren’t. Same like “all browsers should be standard compliant” it has nothing to do with the solution of a problem.

Content with Style - Comment #17 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 15:08:17 +0000

Keywords in URLs do actually give you a LOT of weight by the current Google algorithm so this is a great technique for improving organic search engine listings…

Content with Style - Comment #18 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:28:14 +0000

Content with Style - Comment #19 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 18:59:46 +0000

Nice tutorial on mod rewrite, it’s easier than I thought.

Content with Style - Comment #20 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 18:49:16 +0000

Marko, don’t forget that mod_rewrite is more complex than just what I was showing up till this point. In fact it can manage fairly complex rewrite rules using regular expressions. Maybe that’s worth another article though, I’ll look into it in january.

Content with Style - Comment #21 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 01:11:05 +0000

I wonder if Google just changed the way they deal with duplicate urls. My site just had most of the correct links dropped and the duplicate and often incorrect/outdated links remained.

In fact, look at this page that shows blogs and their number of google pages indexed. http://blognetworklist.com/bgooglepages.php

Why so many zeros? Did blog network blogs just get penalized?

Content with Style - Comment #22 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 07:45:38 +0000

Awesome article thanks

Content with Style - Comment #23 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Thu, 17 May 2007 10:28:20 +0000

On a scale of 1 to 10, your article “Clean URLS for Search Engine Ranking”, rates a 10, M. Opitz.

Mod Rewrites on Apache servers are CPU intensive because you are pattern matching against every single file and directory request including .gifs, .jpg, .html, .php etc… and if you have LARGE volumes of traffic, you will eventually run into performance problems because of all this parsing.

Word to the wise. KISS. Keep your .htaccess files AS SIMPLE and short. Less is better!

Know that if your website is running on a shared hosting server, your service provider may eventually tell you that you have to get off the shared-server and go dedicated because you are taking up to much CPU and slowing down the HTML publishing of 100 or more shared-hosting websites also hosted on your shared-server.

But in terms of “Bang for the Buck”, in the spirit of better SEO and Google Pagerank – Apache Mod-Rewrites and CLEAN, HUMAN-readable, keyword-rich URls are worth it!

If you need a good host with easy to use tools that allows you complete control over your shared hosting environment so you can play with the .htaccess file and use Mod-Rewrites:

Mike Filsaime, Mark Joyner, Armondo Montelongo (Flip this House on A&E), myself and http://ebiz-iq.com/recommends/kiosk

Here are some more good HTACCESS tips:
http://www.IsPopularOnline.com/search/htaccess+rewrite

Looking forward to your next article!

JTMcNaught
http://www.IsPopularOnline
Where Little-Guys get Noticed Online
and 1000’s promote your URLs

Content with Style - Comment #24 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:11:22 +0000

Does this play nice with search engine duplicate content penalties. Surely having the same page available via 4 different URLs counts as duplicates..

Content with Style - Comment #25 on Clean URLs for a better search engine ranking

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:40:54 +0000

Probably not, but then again the example was meant to be a quick fix for querystring driven blogs, not a proper rewrite strategy. I recommend setting up 301 redirects ... in an .htaccess file for example.