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.

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

++

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

Brandon

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

++

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!

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.

++

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.

hmm funny
and any reason why is folder ali so important?

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

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

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

People, let's forget the *tricks* and get down to reality.

dcz & hossein make good points, but here is why:

site.com/brand/type/product-name-pXXX.html makes sense to the user!

Organising things into categories and sub categories within those... burrowing down into your content... this is what organising information (ie. the internet) is all about. Yes, avoid getting urls that are way too long (as an example, blogger, owned by google, shortens page names to the nearest word after a specified number of characters) but do keep it organised.

And can I add here the difference between underscores and hyphens - confirming the point Brandon made a long time ago in his first post...

Underscores and hyphens (dashes) are different grammatically and programmatically.

I have made a three step demonstration offering conclusive underscores vs hyphens seo proof with screen shots which you will find quite shocking for those who have always used underscores.

The URL is important, but the most important is the content in this URL, well, what kind of URL forms not worth so much consider, a short URL would be better

[mod]Link removed[/mod]

[quote="besteast"]The URL is important, but the most important is the content in this URL, well, what kind of URL forms not worth so much consider, a short URL would be better
I agree this

I also agree about short urls... particularly if that's because they're 'top level' pages.
That is, pages that don't come off a sub directory.

There's a high ranking article site that strikes me as different to all the rest - although it seems wise to slot information in categories (and intuitively this is what Google says we should be doing to structure our information) there seems to be ranking benefits to pages that come off the root directory, as though they would be favored out of all of a sites pages, because they are the front line... and supposedly the sub directory stuff are secondary pages, more details, supporting information. Perhaps that's why standard phpBB installs do as well as they do!

I can see the sense in it, in that if I were a search engine and I was looking for the most authoritative article on a keyword I'd climb up the to the top of the directory tree.

If, of course, this means everyone just gets tricky with creating long unique page file names that allow 5000 pages to sit on the root directory, then the cause is warped and whole purpose is defeated.

Hey, as long as they see the light in using hyphens instead of underscores, they've made a good start!