Best URL format for product page

For SEO and user friendly

[philbish]

I am trying to fix up my URL formats to help my search engine rankings.

Here is what I am thinking about:

[widget.com...]

Is there a better method?

[Voyteck]

[widget.com...]

I would recommend going for:
[widget.com...]
[widget.com...]
[widget.com...]

You may need to use re-write rules for that if your system produces search engine non-friendly urls.

Regards

Voyteck

[philbish]

Any idea how I'd need to re-write those rules?

Right now I am using "products" as a php script with no extension and it just looks at the path and parses it.

[DaveAtIFG]

This article [sitepoint.com] or this one [evolt.org] should get you started in the right direction.

[philbish]

Thanks for those links. I was thinking of using a 404 error page that would look in the path, and do a search on my site for products with a matching name. It would then pull up the product that has the matching name.

Exampe:

www.widget.com/red_widgets

This would generate a 404 error which I could have go to a script that looks at the path. It would then pull up the product info page for red_widgets. Would there be any issues with speed if I used this method?

[directoryczar]

GoogleGuy has indicated fairly recently that dashes are preferable to underscores.

[DaveAtIFG]

This would generate a 404 error

That would tell spiders, "The server has not found anything matching the URI given," re: Status Codes [w3.org].

I doubt if that's what you want to do.

[philbish]

Ok well I have it set up to redirect to a certain product page. It doesn't show the traditional 404 error page. To the user it looks like a normal page that they are expecting.

So, you're saying there is a way for the spider to get the status code? Is there a way for me to test this on my site to make sure I am getting the correct status code?

I have this at the top of my script:

header("HTTP/1.1 200 OK");

[DaveAtIFG]

a way for me to test this

This [webmasterworld.com] should do it.

[philbish]

Sweet! Thank you.

Looks like the headers are returning 200 for me. And I am now using dashes.

[philbish]

Is it best to use an extension on my URLs?

I would imagine google things a path with no extension is a directory.

What's best?

www.widget.com/forum/post923423
www.widget.com/forum/post923423.html
www.widget.com/forum/post923423.php

And for my store:

www.widget.com/Red-Widgets
www.widget.com/Red-Widgets.html
www.widget.com/Red-Widgets.php