Search Engine Friednly URL's

[Prasad007]

Why not use Search Engine Friendly URL's for this site?
i mean its a great SMF feature.
I use it for all my forums, so do many other people.
It would index Simple Machines better and increase its page rank of 7
So i think it should be enabled

-Prasad.

[Ben_S]

Google is perfectly happy with the default url structure and the format of the url's has absolutly nothing to do with page rank.

[Dannii]

Exactly. They should really be called people-friendly urls, because the search engines (well the good ones) don't care.

[Prasad007]

okay, but i say its just for the better.

[redone]

If your site is worth crawling they don't really care. Good inbound links and a good quality site naturally draw the search engines.

[Prasad007]

Okay, and are meta tags and description used by SM ?

[Trekkie101]

*SMF

And meta tags count to a degree with search engine, but with Google and MSN atleast, they dont seem to matter at all from my experience.

[Prasad007]

No i meant simple machines. And okay, i guess meta doesnt matter

[sbarnes]

A few questions regarding the different types of urls possible with SMF.

Are there any adantages to using the standard dynamic urls. (non 'SE Friendly').

If somone has for instance bookmarked an url which was 'SE friendly' and you then change to normal dynamic, will the link still work.

Whilst writing this post I have noticed in my admin panel "This feature will work on your server." Hadnt spotted that until now.

I have turned off the option, and I dont know if its just me but the site seems slightly quicker.

What is needed so that this feature will work?

Is it worth trying to get this feature working?

[dejiman]

Now my question is After the friendly Url how can you make your site be amongst the first role of index search engine.I mean Increasing the page rank of your site with google and other search engine (besides Using the Webmaster tool of google)

[Dannii]

Get lots of quality content and quality incoming links.

[MrPhil]

So, is the bottom line that "search engine friendly URLs" do nothing to help SEs? I know that in ancient times, SEs had trouble with (following?) dynamic URLs (.../index.php?topic=12345.0) rather than static URLs (.../boardname/topicname/msg.html), but supposedly that's not been a problem for a long time. What is the purpose of SEF URLs, or are they now just a holdover from old problems and just a waste of effort? I suppose there might be some very small players that still can benefit from SEF URLs, but do Google, Yahoo, or MSN care?

[Dannii]

I wouldn't say they do nothing, but it's very unlikely they directly influence rankings. The could well be a positive indirect influence because people might post and share meaningful URLs more than numerical URLs.

[青山 素子]

What is the purpose of SEF URLs, or are they now just a holdover from old problems and just a waste of effort?

Mostly just a holdover and the fact that some people like them better for some reason. I personally think they are there to shut up the people that insist they help.

I suppose there might be some very small players that still can benefit from SEF URLs, but do Google, Yahoo, or MSN care?

Very few small players. A study done by Web CEO a while back (about four years) found that keywords in URLs help ranking a little with Yahoo!, but had mixed results with Google. If the keyword wasn't very competetive it boosted things a very tiny bit, if it was highly competitive, it seemed to actually decrease the rank. I don't know about you, but I've never seen search engines do a "well, lots of people are using keywords in the URL now, so let's make it help ranking". More often, things will move toward neutral (as has been done with meta keywords) where the effect is none.

The could well be a positive indirect influence because people might post and share meaningful URLs more than numerical URLs.

That's basically about it. Most bloggers and other posters at popular places tend to use good text for links rather than post the URL straight. I personally don't see the benefit outweighing the maintenance needed. The big problem is losing incoming links and ranking when you switch from one scheme to the other. Doing special URLs is probably on the bottom of the list for optimizations I would look at.

[Dannii]

The big problem is losing incoming links and ranking when you switch from one scheme to the other.

But if you use 301 redirects is this still a problem?

[青山 素子]

The big problem is losing incoming links and ranking when you switch from one scheme to the other.

But if you use 301 redirects is this still a problem?

It isn't really, but you then need to maintain that for as long as you think the links will exist (which is quite a long time, usually) out there - not just with search engines. It's quite the pain when moving from keyword-rich to "standard" URLs.

[Dannii]

Time is an issue. But through monitoring server stats you'd get a pretty good idea when they're no longer being used anymore. I've actually made a package to allow people to revert back to the standard SMF urls from my pretty ones with 301s. When I release it properly I'll be interested to see how much it's used.