static vs dynamic URLs on Google and Yahoo

Comparing a static vs dynamic url and the impact in google and yahoo

[jaordo]

Good day everyone,
I have a 4 year old static website that by March had about 80,000 visits a month from which 90% were from google. I wanted to increase the number of visits so I hired somebody to do some SEO work. He intalled a CMS and changed the statig pages to dynamic and did 302 redirects to the new pages.
The visits dropped dramatically in less than 3 days but he said that that would be temporary. The main keyphrases that I care for the most no longer show up in the 10 first results in google but now they do show in yahoo. He is supposed to do linking campaigns to bring in more traffic.
My concern is. Is it not always better search engine friendly urls instead of dynamic urls with a bunch of characters that don't make sense?
Doesn't always gogole and yahoo take in account urls which names relate to the content?
It seems that google cares more about the urls than yahoo.
In any case I am very concern that this could affect my visits for ever and if it affects them, I rather install a cms such as joomla that can produce search engine friendly urls.
Can anyone give me his or her opinion in regards this posting?

[meeni]

Hi there,

Not sure this is the right category for your question but anyway here we go...

This is my view on things from a SEO perspective (it seems like you know quite a bit anyway but might be nice to get it confirmed)

1. Static URLs are always better for the search engines (has your SEO guy implemented any sitemaps?)
2. Unless you are going to use the old URLs again always use 301 redirects, permanent.
3. When you launch new pages you can be down-weighted a while until the new URLs have been 'validated' however if the engines cannot see your new dynamic URLs then it won't get back in the index
4. Relevant keywords in the URLs are always good as it helps the search engines to determine relevance
5. If you use a CMS that produces dynamic URLs you could consider Mod Rewriting or just install something that generates static URLs

Hope that helps a little bit

[libertines]

Hello there Jaordo,

The majority if not all the peole i have met within SEO agree that static URLs are more SE friendly and can go some way to helping rank.

While there are not enough parameters to prevent a search engine indexing dynamic URLs, static URLs can contain targeted keywords that can increase visibility and click through rates as consumers can clearly see what the content of a web page is about. It is believed that Static URLs are typically ranked better in search engine results pages and they are indexed more quickly than dynamic URLs.

Also, unless you do intend to use the old URLs 301 permanent redirecst are always better.

Hope this helps