Can these urls be made friendlier?

[estabahn]

Should I use Mod Rewrite to change these URLS?

I am putting a commerce site together and the cart software I'm using (cubecart 4.x) has a "use search Friendly URLS" option. Is it worth the effort to change these urls? Or should I just leave this alone?

The category urls look like: www.mystore.com/corsets/cat19.html. Would this be a better url as: www.mystore.com/lingerie/corsets/ ?

The product pages look like: www.mystore.com/push-up-corset/prod_46.html. Would this be better as: www.mystore.com/lingerie/corsets/push-up-corset/ ?

How much difference over the long haul in serps will rewriting these make? I'm new to mod rewrite. Am I setting myself up for needing a new rewrite rule *every single* time I add a product to the site?

Thanks!

[jobster]

i think its a much better option to use the search friendly URL's. in terms of SEO ever little bit helps, just remember to re-direct the old URL's to the new ones

[Dubbya]

The fewer directories in the URL, the more weight the page will carry.

Google looks at how buried a page is when assigning page rank, so you definitely don't want to go more than 3 levels deep.

If you've got a dynamic shopping cart that's database driven, you might want to wait before implementing mod rewrites because Google is smart enough to read querystrings.

You might want to simply add a value to the querystring called "colour", "fabric" and/or "item", then assign each one a value like the model number or product name, anything that would relate to a targeted search query that users are likely to type in when looking for your products.

Script the cart to always build hyperlinks like this and you'll accomplish exactly what you want to do.


<a href="http://www.somewhere.com/product19.html?colour=black&fabric=leather&item=corset

As long as you've optimized your product pages properly, a search for "black leather corsets" makes this a highly relevant URL.

If you do it like this, it won't matter how many new products you add or remove.

.02

[estabahn]

I just bumped into this posting over at seomoz: SEOmoz | 11 Best Practices for URLs (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls) Where he makes a case for semantic (but short urls).

Given that, which is the most search friendly product url:

1. www.mystore.com/lingerie/corsets/push-up-corset/

2. www.mystore.com/lingerie/push-up-corset/

3. www.mystore.com/push-up-corset


I was hoping to put 'lingerie' into the url paths because it's a lingerie store, but 'lingerie' is not part of the domain name.

Thanks!

[Dubbya]

According to a posting in the Google Webmaster blog, their latest recommendation is NOT to rewrite dynamic URLS into static ones.

Rewriting URLS is supposed to make it easier for your users to read and remember URLS but I don't really think it's that much an issue in a dynamic shopping page. They'll just copy/paste or bookmark the URL anyway, so what's the problem? Seems like a lot of work for not a lot of gain, but that's just my opinion.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Dynamic URLs vs. static URLs (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html)

And a related article at Search Engine Land
Google Says, Don’t Rewrite Dynamic URLs To Static URLs (http://searchengineland.com/google-says-dont-rewrite-dynamic-urls-to-static-urls-14795.php)

Above all, just make sure they can find the page and let them spider it. If you've done your job, it'll rank well.