search engine friendly URLs

better with or without trailing slashes?

[jamie]

we are in the process of making sections of our site dynamic.

we are rewriting the URLs to read domain.com/articles/34 as opposed to domain.com?var1=articles&var2=34, etc..

at the moment we are not using a trailing slash in the URLs e.g. domain.com/articles/34/ - should we? could this affect our rankings in any way?

cheers

[trillianjedi]

I would only put a trailing slash after the root domain name. All other deep linked URL's should be fully qualified and end ".php" or ".html" etc.

So for example:-

[domain.com...]

[domain.com...]

TJ

[jpjones]

A trailing / at the end of the url signifys another directory, and your pagerank for that page would typically diminish.

[pixel_juice]

>>A trailing / at the end of the url signifys another directory, and your pagerank for that page would typically diminish.

This isn't true. PageRank has nothing to do with directory structure, and rewriting urls will not affect PR. PR is based entirely on link structure.

The idea that the deeper you get into a folder structure of a site the more PR diminishes, stems from 2 things - toolbar PR which is guessed, and also that sites natural linking structures tend to distribute more PR to higher level pages, and less to lower levels.

As long as your server returns the correct http response code to requests for www.domain.com/34 and www.domain.com/34/ and the links to the pages are consistent you should have nothing to worry about.

[jamie]

hi TJ,

interesting about ending the page in .html or .php

i could of course add an .html or .php to the end of these links and simply strip it off again in order to process the $var and to query the database.

isn't that a bit OTT? hmmmm... well it is what brett does... ;-)

jpjones, that makes sense about the directory, because they are not directories, they are individual pages.

this definitely needs some more thought. especially as we are in the process of converting our static site to a dynamic site and this decision will affect the entire structure

in fact the more i think about it, the more sense it makes to give each page its own .php/html ending...

much obliged!

[jamie]

hi pixel juice - i was too long writing that post...

now of course you have completely thrown me back to my original thinking..... ;-)

the headers are all correct, each page is recognised as a completely 'normal' page.

thanks

[pixel_juice]

Don't disregard TJ's suggestion - if every page on your site 'appears' to be a directory this might be a little strange. However, search engines are not the only consideration when deciding how to write your urls - it might be worth a quick read of 'cool URIs don't change' [w3.org] from W3C.

[jamie]

pixel_juice

that article is great, though-provoking reading. cheers.

i like the bit about a URI having to last for 2, 20 or even 200 years and the fact that by not using an ending (.php .html or other), we could easily change the technology behind the site without then having to change the URIs.

but that does mean that in the course of the next year (as we go dynamic), that the URI of most of our pages would change, as at the moment they are www.domain.com/subfolder/interesting_page_i.html (_i for english, _e for spanish, etc)

unless i rewrite all of these to read the same as they are now.... lots of food for thought!

[rogerd]

Jamie, just because your techology changes you don't have to change the extensions. Rather, if you pick a style (e.g., .html), you can just change your server settings if you need to process the files for ASP, PHP, or whatever.

[jamie]

of course rogerd, i forgot about that - doh! :-)

maybe there is a way to keep a lot of the current URIs whilst changing over. it certainly makes sense. i think a long hard think is necessary before plunging ;-)

cheers

[WibbleWobble]

With more and more scripting languages emerging, and internet users still being as dumb as they are, I'd steer clear of extensions altogether. Directories with sensible structures are far easier to remember, as Nielsen [useit.com] points out.