CMS URLs: will they knock your SEO back?

[dedhed9]

I want to go the CMS route on a couple of sites, but I'm worried that the new URLs will wreck the SEO status of the sites.

As far as I am aware (I have no experience of CMS), the addresses will change from a nice flat www.thesite/thepage.html to something like www.thesite/page?99cgi?xyz*!@=headache&aspirins.php - or something like it - won't they?

This sure looks like it will make search engines much less likely to crawl & index the pages; I had this problem bigtime with a dynamic ecommerce site before.

Any thoughts?

[caveman]

Yes, that will create two sets of problems. If the site is already up and running, then you're changing the URL's of existing pages and will need to 301 redirect all the old URL's to the new ones. While that process should go smoothly, it doesn't always. Sometimes it can take months for your pages to regain their previous rankings, especially in G.

In your case though, the problem is maginified, in that you're replacing SEO-friendly URL's with SEO-unfriendly URL's, which will have a somewhat dampening effect on your rankings, most likely. Keywords in URL's, as long as their use is prudent, help the SE's understand what a page is about. Take those away, and you make it harder for the SE's to properly categorize and rank your site's pages.

[ASchmitt]

hmmz... all depends on what kind of cms your planning to use...

If you will write one your own... you should indeed use 301...

If your gonna use an opensource there're plenty of SEO friendly CMS or enough modules to have SEO friendly url's

<snip>: comes with a standard mod-Rewrite friendly url module
<snip>: url's are pretty SEO friendly, but some modding needs to be done
<snip>: no SEO friendly URL, but excellent mod to make them SEO friendly

Maybe a little advice... try to create your CMS next to your existing platform... and graduatly modifiyng pages to the new url...

[edited by: caveman at 4:43 pm (utc) on Sep. 25, 2006]
[edit reason] No specifics please, per TOS. [/edit]