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This is probably the most common approach employed by dynamic web sites at present, because you

frequently meet URLs such as the following:

?

http://www.example.com/catalog.php?cat_id=1

?

http://www.example.com/catalog.php?cat_id=2&prod_id=3&ref_id=4

This approach is certainly the easiest and most straightforward when developing a dynamic site. However,

it is frequently sub-optimal from a search engine spider ’s point of view. It also doesn’t provide relevant

keywords or a call to action to a human viewing the URL.

Some programmers also tend to use extra parameters freely — as shown in the second URL example. For

example, if the parameter

ref_id

is used for some sort of tracking mechanism, and search engine friend-

liness is a priority, it should be removed. Lastly, any necessary duplicate content should be excluded from

search engines’ view using a

robots.txt

file or a

robots

meta tag. This topic is discussed in Chapter 5.

Example #2: Numeric Rewritten URLs

An improved version of the previous example is a modified URL that removes the dynamic parameters

and hides them in a static URL. This static URL is then mapped to a dynamic URL using an Apache

module called mod_rewrite. The

ref_id

parameter previously alluded to is also not present, because

those types of tracking parameters usually can and should be avoided:

?

http://www.example.com/Products/1/

?

http://www.example.com/Products/2/1/

The impact of numeric URL rewriting will likely be negligible on a page with one parameter, but on

pages with two parameters or more, URL-rewriting is desirable.

This form of URL is particularly well-suited to the adaptation of existing software. Retrofitting an

application for keyword-rich URLs, as discussed in the next section, may present additional difficulty

in implementation.

It is important to realize that rewriting a dynamic URL only

obscures

the parameters. It prevents a search

engine from perceiving that a URL structure is problematic as a result of having many parameters. If

underlying problems still exist on a web site — usually in the form of duplicate content — a search engine

still may still have difficulty indexing it effectively.

If URLs on your site are for the most part indexed properly, it may not be wise to

restructure URLs. However, if you decide that you must, please also read Chapter 4,

which teaches you how to make the transition smoother. Chapter 4 shows how to

preserve link equity by properly redirecting old URLs to new URLs. Also, not all

solutions to URL-based problems require restructuring URLs; as mentioned earlier,

duplicate content can be excluded using the

robots.txt

file or the

robots

meta tag,

which are discussed in Chapter 5.

43

Chapter 3: Provocative SE-Friendly URLs

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