Topic: Pretty URLs

[Arantor]

There's no way to do it that isn't a vast amount of work to make it work correctly

[vbgamer45]

I would advise to doing some rewrite script.

[GigaWatt]

You might be able to solve your problem with this script, but you'd have to do it with every board URL on your forum.

[Biology Forums]

I have an important question.

Let's pretend we have this MOD activated and we decide to switch a thread from one board to another.

url.com/board1/title to url.com/board2/title

Will this affect ranking or are the redirects 301? Also, if we decide to go back to normal URLs, will it affect ranking?

[GigaWatt]

That's why I don't like mods like this one.

I'm in the process of rearranging some of the boards and moving some threads from one board to another on my forum and I have no idea what would happen if I already had something like this installed. This way, everything's clean, the board numbers stays the same. The only difference is the location of the board itself.

[Biology Forums]

Let's await for the author to respond, because this is extremely important.

[Biology Forums]

@vbgamer45

Do you know the answer to the question asked above?

[njtweb]

I have an important question.

Let's pretend we have this MOD activated and we decide to switch a thread from one board to another.

url.com/board1/title to url.com/board2/title

Will this affect ranking or are the redirects 301? Also, if we decide to go back to normal URLs, will it affect ranking?

I wouldn't use this mod at all. While back in the day 5-6-10 years ago it was helpful for google search results, it's really not of any use at all today. And if you want to turn it off to go back to normal URLs, you will absolutely destroy your rank. Not to mention you will have to 301 every single URL because they will not translate when switched back. It serves no other purpose today except for what it's name is, your URL's look pretty.

[vbgamer45]

I have an important question.

Let's pretend we have this MOD activated and we decide to switch a thread from one board to another.

url.com/board1/title to url.com/board2/title

Will this affect ranking or are the redirects 301? Also, if we decide to go back to normal URLs, will it affect ranking?

Yes there are 301 redirects in place for that case.

There is a reverter package in place that you can revert back to a seperate download

[Arantor]

That's not *entirely* true though it is *mostly* true on most platforms. If a link with pretty URLs is posted to a platform that doesn't preview/embed it, the URL being readable might still encourage traffic.

Though this becomes less relevant as more platforms fetch the title or a preview of the link - but don't underestimate the human factor of what looks nicer.

[Biology Forums]

I have an important question.

Let's pretend we have this MOD activated and we decide to switch a thread from one board to another.

url.com/board1/title to url.com/board2/title

Will this affect ranking or are the redirects 301? Also, if we decide to go back to normal URLs, will it affect ranking?

I wouldn't use this mod at all. While back in the day 5-6-10 years ago it was helpful for google search results, it's really not of any use at all today. And if you want to turn it off to go back to normal URLs, you will absolutely destroy your rank. Not to mention you will have to 301 every single URL because they will not translate when switched back. It serves no other purpose today except for what it's name is, your URL's look pretty.

That's not *entirely* true though it is *mostly* true on most platforms. If a link with pretty URLs is posted to a platform that doesn't preview/embed it, the URL being readable might still encourage traffic.

Though this becomes less relevant as more platforms fetch the title or a preview of the link - but don't underestimate the human factor of what looks nicer.

Thank you, I have turned it off.

[SirLouen]

Thank you, I have turned it off.

By the way, a really great forum you have designed. Inspirational for me, because I've lost a little bit the faith in SMF in the last year.

I would like to see how your ranks evolve after you have switch it off, are you currently monitoring some keywords in the SERPs?

[SirLouen]

That's not *entirely* true though it is *mostly* true on most platforms. If a link with pretty URLs is posted to a platform that doesn't preview/embed it, the URL being readable might still encourage traffic.

I've noticed that this is a common conception. There is a little caveat that you are not taking in consideration. When you are ranking long tail keywords, it's true that EMD or UEM is not that important (the proof can be seen with this forum, that ranks a ton of long tail keywords).

But when you are fighting with some posts for some more competed niches this can make a difference with short tails. For example, in the Study Force case, ranking for "some tests banks in certain subjects" can be really competed and important at the same time. Ranking with biology-forum...../index.php?topic=1234 will be a bad deal especially if there is a huge 10K+ words pillar post with internal linking to all the greatest banks in the site.

[Arantor]

Does it make a difference, though? How could you *possibly* tell whether any one factor on its own makes a difference?

[SirLouen]

Well, there are some superstitions all over the place. Sometimes is good to satisfy the superstitions in order to keep it up. I'm so superstitious in this sense, that I even buy new exact match TLD to try to achieve an optimal match  (for example: dallas.attorney for "dallas attorney keyword").

But regardless of that, in this case, if you eliminate the rewriting after being done as Study Force has done, it will literally kill your site in terms of SEO.
You might need thousands of manual 301 to redirect the old P-URLs to new non-P-URLs. All the internal linking done through P-URL will be destroyed, and all the external linking should be audited in order to create the new redirections also (at least the most important backlinks)

Anyway, here are all the reasons why statics URLs are a must for all marketers
https://moz.com/blog/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls-the-best-practice-for-seo-is-still-clear

Also, I have a "theory", when you link build with a P-URL you are actually inputting an anchor text in the link. For example. If your anchor text is "Dallas attorney affordable"  and you have a link like dallas.attorney/affordable you are creating a direct link but indirectly contextualizing this link. This means that both the link and each part has the wording for semantic SEO purposes (as href=...> + the URL itself as the anchor text. So in this sense, you are doubling your linking "power" by the link itself + context.

But as I said, in the beginning, may this be just a superstition.

[Kindred]

you realize that article is opinion only -- and it is opinion based on the internet as of 2008 -- 10 years ago.

Things have changed significantly in 10 years.

Keywords in the URL are basically ignored by search engines these days. They based their scans on CONTENT. Specifically, well designed, well tagged content. (unfortunately, for the most part, that is not possible to force in a forum environment, since YOU have no control over the content that other users post)

The ONE advantage that so called "static" urls have is that they ar emore easily recognizable and human readable. That's it.

If you are going to do a whole bunch of online advertising, then it doens't matter, because you can control the presentation of the advert -- amd people don't have to remember the link.
If you are not going to advertise or promote your site externally, then it doesn't matter, because google and others will scan your site just fine and will present the summary along with the dynamic url.

The only time it really matters is if you plan to do print advertising or ask others to link to specific locations on your site.

[Arantor]

Human readable does have a psychological advantage over non human readable, just like using the full link gives you information that a URL shortener would remove.

[Kindred]

this is true

[njtweb]

I have an important question.

Let's pretend we have this MOD activated and we decide to switch a thread from one board to another.

url.com/board1/title to url.com/board2/title

Will this affect ranking or are the redirects 301? Also, if we decide to go back to normal URLs, will it affect ranking?

I wouldn't use this mod at all. While back in the day 5-6-10 years ago it was helpful for google search results, it's really not of any use at all today. And if you want to turn it off to go back to normal URLs, you will absolutely destroy your rank. Not to mention you will have to 301 every single URL because they will not translate when switched back. It serves no other purpose today except for what it's name is, your URL's look pretty.

That's not *entirely* true though it is *mostly* true on most platforms. If a link with pretty URLs is posted to a platform that doesn't preview/embed it, the URL being readable might still encourage traffic.

Though this becomes less relevant as more platforms fetch the title or a preview of the link - but don't underestimate the human factor of what looks nicer.

Thank you, I have turned it off.

This is forum related, are you a Bio major? My son starts college this fall and that's his major. Would your forum be helpful to him?

[Biology Forums]

^^ Absolutely, and it's entirely free. Ask questions, receive expert help.