What is the best form of a URL?

Brandon · Joined: 09 Jan 2007 Posts: 8

Hey guys,

I have been reading about the different ways to have your URLs. After doing alot of reading, I understand that words should be separated with dashes rather than underscores. But I can't seem to really find a consensus on the "best" URL form. Should it be something like this:

site.com/page-name-text/

Or this:

site.com/page-name-text.html

I have also read some articles saying that the URLs should be "themed", like category based:

site.com/desktops/
site.com/desktops/hp-pavilion/
site.com/desktops/hp-pavilion/a1000n-intel-celeron/

Or this:

site.com/desktops/
site.com/desktops/hp-pavilion/
site.com/desktops/hp-pavilion/a1000n-intel-celeron/
site.com/desktops/hp-pavilion/a1000n-intel-celeron/processor.html

Can you please advise on the most desirable URL from?

Sorry is this is a dumb question, but I am new to SEO...

Thanks, Brandon.

dcz

Well it depends.

First matter is do-ability.

Then, if you have choices, I think the important matter is to try to use rather short urls, with keywords injected in it.

And then, it depends.

For a forum, ending content is not always well organized. It's not meant to be used as a cms or a blog.

Topic titles are not always good to inject depending on the general topic covered on a given forum.

To me there is not much difference SEO wise between :

site.com/page-name-text/

and

site.com/page-name-text.html

But I would not use the first one if it was the ending content, not a category.
I mean, it's not very important, but the first one is pretending to be a folder, and I would prefer not to have to many of those if there is nothing really inside.

site.com/desktops/
site.com/desktops/hp-pavilion/

Would perfectly fulfill me if there was some content in those folders like :

site.com/desktops/page-name-text.html
site.com/desktops/hp-pavilion/ page-name-text.html

Again many web-sites do have good result without using .html, but I kind of like to stay as close to static web as possible when I Search Engine Optimize.

And most of the time, once you stick to the minimum SEO requirements, the simpler the better Wink

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Brandon · Joined: 09 Jan 2007 Posts: 8

Hey, thanks for the tips.

In addition to PHPbb, I am also developing an e-commerce website. Which will have several categories as well as subcategories, in that case, would you reccomend the "folder" style? Like this:

site.com/desktops/
site.com/desktops/page-name-text.html
site.com/desktops/hp-pavilion/page-name-text.html

Or would you suggest something else?

Thanks again Very Happy

Brandon

dcz

Well, do simple.

What we want the most with URL standards, is to be duplicate free, and not too long.

If you inject parent cat in a sub cat URL, you should not go above one sub level IMHO, because :

site.com/desktops/
site.com/desktops/page-name-text.html
site.com/desktops/hp-pavilion/page-name-text.html

Can already be long, but :

site.com/desktops/hp-pavilion/another-cat/page-name-text.html

Would start to be long.

Of course this depend on the length of the categories titles, but, you got my point.

As well, you want a unique title per page, the final goal is :
One page, one title, one URL Wink

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Brandon · Joined: 09 Jan 2007 Posts: 8

Hey dcz,

Yeah thats what I am worried about the injecting categories in URLs. I know Google doesn't like to many folders... By default (using mod_rewrite) it does URLs like this:

site.com/product-name-pXXX.html
site.com/category-name-cXXX.html
site.com/page-name-aXXX.html

With the aXXX, cXXX, or pXXX being the page, category or product ID.

And the title is no problem, I can control the page title, meta keywords, and meta description individually for each page.

Is there going to be any search engine gain to modding the cart to do the folder URL style?

Thanks again! Very Happy

dcz

Well the difference won't be this big.

The cool thing would be if you added on folder level for brands or cat for example, as long as their name is short (on or two words).

I mean :
site.com/brand/product-name-pXXX.html
Can be good.

Same for others, if you manage to use short folder names.

But the URL structure you propose will still give pretty good results, the folder can be useful to add weight on few words, but we start comparing two efficient standards already and the ending difference in results could only come from the way they are used.

++

hosseintdk775 · Joined: 28 Jun 2007 Posts: 6

In the name of the god.
hi,
I think that best form is :
site.com/ali/

and in ali folder the file should be index.html ( we should put index.html in ali folder).
this form is best in seo. Wink

TomaS · PR2 Joined: 08 Jun 2007 Posts: 204

hmm funny

and any reason why is folder ali so important? Laughing

hosseintdk775 · Joined: 28 Jun 2007 Posts: 6

In the name of the god.
hi,
I say for example, you can use what you like.

dcz

With god's help, I'm sure you can end up first on all queries in all search engines (just kidding Wink

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NBridges · Joined: 27 Apr 2008 Posts: 1

Hmmm, I think the second set of URLs are good enough,