Extension question

[Fitank]

Hi

I have a questions from our Italian webmaster he can't find the answer on the Italian forums so I said I'd post it here:
" URL replacer, how useful is it for indexing the site"?

He's mainly talking about dynamic pages (aspx) with query strings and replacing these with simpler URLs (or not!). I've read conflicting opinions about whether these sort of pages with relatively long extensions (in this case from a database) are penalized or not in Google. My feeling is not, but it would be good to get you guys' opinions!

Thanks!
Fiona

[Dubbya]

Without question, Google treats them similarly, however there are still some things to consider.

Do your best to refrain from adding too many parameters to the querystring and avoid long numbers such as session ID's. According to Matt Cutts of Google, it's best to restrict your parameters to no more than 3 or 4.

Matt Cutts from Google explains this further:
Static vs. Dynamic urls

While mod_rewrite may work on Apache servers, you might want to investigate alternative solutions on a Windows server. There are several custom software solutions, each costing around $99.00. You buy the software, run it on your IIS server and it'll allow you to dynamically rewrite dynamic URL's to static URL's.

Quite honestly, you don't need to worry about it too much. Just add a new parameter to the querystring describing the page content and you'll be fine.

For example, the original URL to the Matt Cutts video looks like this:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6860320126300142609

To better optimize it, one might add a new parameter:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?content=static_vs_dynamic_URLs_Matt_Cutts&docid=-6860320126300142609

To be mose effective you might want to use dashes or underscores to separate the information into a short phrase that most resembles your targeted search query.

It'll take some planning and some coding but it can improve rankings to some extent. Having just a little more relevant info in the URL often proves helpful to users and spiders alike.

Good Luck.

[incrediblehelp]

Good answer from Dubbya. Could you post a URL so we can be sure?

[Fitank]

Thank you very much for your help.

here is an example of a 'database' URL
Perugia property rentals in the Umbria region and Perugia province

and here is the replacement URl

Perugia property rentals in the Umbria region and Perugia province

By the way this whole site is being redesigned so I have suspended seo work on it for the moment although it gets page 1 rankings for some key phrases.

Thanks again
Fiona

[Fitank]

Sorry those have not come out as I intended. I'll post and miss out one 'w' of the www
no 1 http://ww.landscapeproperties.com/de...a.aspx?id=5941
no 2 http://ww.landscapeproperties.com/borgobrufa.aspx

[incrediblehelp]

Actually both URLs are fine fro rankings.