Which of these forum thread urls is best for seo?

[papa_mia]

Hello


Which url structure of these is best for seo?

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mydomain.com/showthread.php/1222-arabic-text-arabic-text-arabic-text

mydomain.com/showthread.php?1222-arabic-text-arabic-text-arabic-text

mydomain.com/t1222.html

mydomain.com/showthread.php?t=1222

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My forum is at its start, and I want to choose the very most seo friendly url structure from start so that I don't have to change it later.



* Please keep in mind that I'm talking about an Arabic forum, and the text in urls is Arabic.


I'd appreciate your help, and thanks in advance!

[santah]

I'd suggest the shortest one, with no .php, aka:

mydomain.com/thread/1222-arabic-text-arabic-text-arabic-text

[papa_mia]

So is having the text in urls better for seo than having a html extention ?

[FranticFish]

Text in urls is a good thing. Opinion is divided as to whether you get an SEO boost for the url having text in it just in itself (and even those that say you do acknowledge it is a very small boost), but the following benefits are definite:

- if people link using the url then you have useful anchor text in your link
- users prefer straightforward looking urls
- Google will bold words related to the search in their SERPS in the url just as they do for the title and snippet, so you increase the chance of drawing attention to your listing

As far as extensionless urls go, if you're starting a new site I'd use them. There's no SEO boost in dropping the extension that I know of, but you end up with a shorter, more user-friendly looking url.

[tedster]

And if you ever move to a new technology for the site, you won't need to rewrite the URLs.

[Simsi]

I'm pretty sure I saw a video by Matt Cutts recently that said the directory/filename portion of a URL is irrelevant in SEO terms but worth considering as a CTA. Unless my memory is fading :)

[papa_mia]

tedster,

I used what Santah suggested:
mydomain.com/thread/1222-arabic-text-arabic-text-arabic-text
But i had to use rewrite tules for it.

so do you think rewrite is not good seo, or is it just against google's polycies ?

[tedster]

I didn't express myself very well - sorry. I mean that if you set up a site using rewrites to remove the file extension now, then if you ever change server technology you won't need to change your URLs or get tangled up in redirects.

There's nothing wrong with URL rewrites at all.

[papa_mia]

thank you

[enigma1]

Why do you need some id appended like 1222? They can be even more meaningful without it. If you want SEO urls then get rid of the ids. And when you port/update the site you won't need to do redirects for links or write various rules to decode them.

[pageoneresults]

I'd suggest the shortest one, with no .php, aka: mydomain.com/thread/1222-arabic-text-arabic-text-arabic-text

I'd like to expand on this one. I'd remove the -arabic-text-arabic-text-arabic-text portion, you don't need that long hyphenated URI and it will cause challenges down the line. I might do something along the lines of...

example.com/category/1222

Long hyphenated URIs are not user friendly. If you use them, I'd strongly suggest a shorter counterpart that can be shared easily from memory. You can noindex one or the other, I'd keep the short one as the primary destination page.

Oh, and just because Matt Cutts has long hyphenated URIs doesn't make them the best option for all. Typically those types of URIs are Blog generated. Or, someone saw what others are doing and just followed along not realizing what they were getting themselves into.

From my perspective, long URIs are NOT what you want in the long run. Try telling someone on the phone to go to mydomain.com/thread/1222-arabic-text-arabic-text-arabic-text. You'd be lucky to get past the 3rd hyphen without a typo on the users side.

I'm serious, if you're going to use those URIs for promotion, keep them short and sweet - forget about all the keyword laden hyphenation! Plan your taxonomy, your primary category structure, and then go from there.

example.com/category/1222

Okay, someone tell me what's wrong with the above URI? Remember, the category is going to contain at least one primary keyword relative to that content.

On a side note, if you're doing a major overhaul, now would be the time to get rid of the www. host name, you don't need it anymore. ;)

[Brett_Tabke]

<counter-point>

Remember that URL's and keywords can be used to 'exclude' a page from showing up in searches too.

If you have a page "all about apples", why should google show your page for results for "fruit"?

If you have a url that says "growing and cooking good apples", why should google show your page for "apple cider"?

I still maintain,

"mydomain.com/t1222.html"

Will show up in more long tail searches than:

"mydomain.com/showthread.php?1222-arabic-text-arabic-text-arabic-text"

The later defines your 'keyword set' (anyone remember the paper on keyword vectors?) This is near the same theory in action. By defining the scope of your page - or making it top heavy towards one topic - you eliminate your possibility of showing up in alternative and often ambiguous long tail searches. Your page becomes so heavy with the keywords in the url, that you take away from the alternative searches.

I have seen more success (look in your address bar now), with mostly ambiguous urls (especially filenames), than with keyword urls.

reference: theme pyramids [webmasterworld.com]

[Simsi]

Matt Cutts on using keywords in the URL:

[youtube.com...]

[enigma1]

making it top heavy towards one topic - you eliminate your possibility of showing up in alternative and often ambiguous long tail searches.

I believe the alternative searches will still yield good results for the page with the friendly link. You can try it on the same domain using 2 separate pages with identical content except the link. Eg:
example.com/p123.html
example.com/url-meaning.html

Probably the p123.html will show up as duplicate/redundant page in this case.

Lots of alternative searches have to do with domain rank. But there are certain keywords topic-related which greatly influence the search results. On this phrase:
"Which of these forum thread urls is best for seo?"
I would say urls, seo, best, forum, thread are the keywords (ordered by significance), once substituted with synonyms will alter the search results. But the link keywords is just one factor. Various content elements (title, description, summary etc) are important.

If this forum was using the expanded keywords instead of the thread identifiers, given its current rank, I think the results would be the same for a given search, in other words using either link type.

If it was a forum with low rank now, then keywords in the link will help to bring the page higher for keywords matches. Alternative searches are then subject to the content but given some competition is unlikely to show the page.

Finally identifiers with the url create maintenance and SEO problems in the long run. If the database changes and you port the data to a new db structure the 1222 identifier has to be handled separately via a rule or special routine. While having only keywords simplifies maintenance because the code although totally different, can still create identical urls.