Using URL Rewriting to include relevant keywords in your URL
FREE OFFER Receive 500 free quality targeted visitors to your website with Revisitors.com
Search engines gives a lot of importance to keywords inside a URL. You already know that keywords are playing an important role in search engine optimization, and you also already know that placing keywords in bold face and in header tags (H1-H6) helps search engine to determine what the page is about but do you know that keywords in the URL have a huge importance too ?
When you build a website, you have to create pages and folders, organize them to be able to understand yourself when working on your website, so often the structure of your website is very unsignificant for search engines. To increase the relevantness of your URLs you have to place more significant keywords in your URL. Let's take a look at these examples :
Static URL
A static URL is something that points to a static HTML page that does not render dynamic content based on querystring parameters (everything after the ? in a URL).
Before: http://www.dotmedias.com/ads/compare.aspx
After: http://www.dotmedias.com/online-advertising/compare-management-fees.aspx
By doing this you give to the search engine the very significant keywords "Online Advertising" and "Compare Management Fees".
Dynamic URL
A dynamic URL is something that points to a dynamic page (ASP, ASPX, PHP, JSP, etc.) that does render dynamic content based on querystring parameters (everything after the ? in a URL).
Before: http://www.dotmedias.com/pr.aspx?id=5c1f6adb-34f9-44f6-9fe1-ce47c30220ea
After: http://www.dotmedias.com/press-release/2010/8/31/dotmedias-online-advertising-firm-now-offering-mobile-advertising-5c1f6adb-34f9-44f6-9fe1-ce47c30220ea.aspx
By doing this you give to the search engine the keyword "Press Release", the date of the press release and the complete title of the press release. That kind of URL is very, very significant for a search engine.
URL Rewriting implementation
To implement URL Rewriting you do not have to move all your pages and rename them. No, you can only add a URL Rewriting module to your website (if you're using .Net you can use URL Rewriter which works great) and set some URL Mappings to match every old URL with the new URL. After that you update internal links to point at your keyword-rich URLs and you're done !
If you only have static URLs in your website and are using .Net, you can simply use the the URL Mapping feature that works very well and is built-in the product.
Created on: 2010-09-03
Last updated on: 2010-09-03
Tags
SEO, SEO Tip, Search Engine Optimization
Similar articles
|