Forum Moderators: open
Does it make really a difference for google to have smooth url instead of parameters url?
2) WidgetSite.com/b/ref=gb_zr_h/xb2-2349778-8351340?%5F&alt=8&co=541966&afm=ATVwwwwDK45643DER&pf_rd_s=lr=07TJZPWXDT1EBMsdfsfgRZP?&whew
OK, which one gives the SE's a better clue about what the page is about? ;-)
In have toyed with it but my urls
[mysite.com...]
get indexed easily in google
I wonder if there might be an issue with dup content if both url structures work.
Also for my board there were some problems with the right conversion of sub forums and multiple pages.
Instead I punted for SEO of the board, and producing regular sitemaps of all the threads. That seems to work well.
Finally the question is what weight does google give to url names? From some facinating recent research I recently have read it might not be that important.
Agreed, to some extent anyway.
But let's distinguish between the engines' ability to crawl and index pages, and what *ranks* best.
The SE's have gotten progressively better at crawling and indexing long complex URI's, no question. At the same time, they've gone on record suggesting that long, complex URI's are bad practice, and that short, kw oriented directory and filenames is good practice. They understand that if a site owner names a directory /oranges/ that the the content in that directory does almost certainly have something to do with oranges.
Also, it's very well known and easy to observe in the real world that generally the longer and more special characters in a URI, the less well that page ranks.
None of this implies that a page with a long complex URI won't rank well. Clearly pages with long complex URI's can and do rank well. But hundreds of factors go into that.
A better way to look at this is that given two identical pages of equal strength, and in the absense of dup content filters, the one with the shorter cleaner more kw oriented URI is likely to rank better for the terms in that URI, especially for the term(s) in the filename or final directory of the string. So why not practice best practice, and give every page of your site the greatest possible opportunity to rank well? ;-)
So *the million dollar question* is: Does it worth the effort?
Do the url-rewriting mods for forums work effectively for SEO?...was answered.
It does.
Whether it's worth it to you, who can say? Hundreds of factors are involved with ranking sites. Directory and file names are relatively important ones, but not the only ones. Great rankings are rarely if ever about one factor no matter how important.
It's like a race car driver asking if s/he should rebuild the car because they've just learned that the aerodynamics could be a little bit better. Can they win the race without rebuilding the car? How much will it cost to rebuild? Will they have to rebuild at some point in any event? How's the driver feeling? What does the competition look like? Are they starting the race at position 3, or position 33? How much money do you make if you finish 3rd? 13th? 33rd? ;-)
