Search Engine Friendly URLs: Your SEO Friend

Our quest for information is increasing at a remarkable pace. Internet technology has greatly helped in enhancing our knowledge by making information easily available via web content. Earlier people used to be content by visiting a website and reading its contents. But nowadays, a single webpage simply serves as the entry point to information on a subject. There are numerous URLs in newer websites that take you into deeper layers of information.

Why not Query Strings?

Search engines do not accept special characters

Earlier query strings would be passed for accessing information from another webpage, but nowadays query strings are seldom used because information gathering largely involves search engines which do not recognize special characters like question marks. As a result they do not index the websites which do not get listed in their top ranking lists. Of course there search engines like Google that can index a URL with a query string, but most of them don’t. Apart from the question mark, search engines also don’t index query strings with an “ & “ or an “ =” sign. Because of these indexing problems, a website which is dynamic might simply not get the chance to get listed in the top positions of a search engine listing.

SEF URLs are compatible with different platforms

Your website can be expected to bag a top position in the search engine listing only when the URLs are in a compatible format. Search engine friendly URLs can be sent using different techniques.

SEF URLs are human friendly

Search engine friendly URLs are actually human friendly too! The query strings are not only difficult for the search engines to understand, but also difficult for the program generator or the end user to remember. Search Engine friendly URLs are short and they are mostly English words which is easy for both the search engine and the end user to work upon. Query strings are very lengthy and they are difficult to type as well. Search engine friendly URLs are short and they can be easily typed by the end user or the programmer. URLs that are not search engine friendly are called dirty URLs. An example of this is http://www.simple.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=3&view=basic. The usage of punctuation and the length and the complex nature of the URLs makes typing mistakes very common.

Search engine friendly URLs are easily comprehendible by the end users and hence they work as sources of information for them. A query string on the other hand, cannot be understood by the end users and hence is of little informative value to them.

Query strings are less secure than SEF URLs

The query string also seems to be less secure than the search engine friendly URL. It seems, hackers modify the part of the query string after the “?” mark to intrude into a web application and introduce malignancy into it. Therefore from the security point of view, the search engine friendly URLs are preferable.

SEF URLs encapsulate the technical details of a website

Search Engine Friendly URLs encapsulate the technical details of a website. A query string on the other hand, exposes the technical details of a website. Abstraction of the technology used is not possible. So switching over from one technology to another is a Herculean task owing to the obstacles posed by broken links and innumerable redirecting links. Search engine friendly URLs allow for abstraction of the technology used which easily enables the switching over to a new technology a cake walk.

SEF URLS are important for content management systems

Search engine friendly URLs are suitable for content management systems also. Query strings are not search engine friendly and they are difficult to type and remember. SEF URLs also tell the search engines what a particular website contains. The search engine does not have to waste time trying to decipher a query strings. Many times certain parts of the query string that are not comprehendible by the search engine are ignored by it.

URLs with session IDs not acceptable by search engines

Nowadays, search engines are also accepting dynamic URLs with a “?” and an “&”. So there is no problem if you insert them. But you will not get a very favorable ranking with the keyword search because SEF URLs are ranked well in the keyword search. A “?” or an “&” are not taken as positive or negative by the search engines. But dynamic URLs have session IDs which are not accepted by the search engines. Hence, as SEF URLs do not have session IDs they are accepted well by the search engines.

Linking with other websites easy with SEF URLs

A “?” or “&” is not preferred by the search engines not because the search engine algorithm creates any problems but because they are not going to be linked to by any other website. As they are difficult to comprehend, other websites will not know the contents of the website it represents. As a result there will not be many takers for such URLs. On the other hand, SEF URLs clearly indicate to other websites that are interested in linking, the contents of the websites they represent. As a result, more websites will be interested in linking with a website with SEF URL which will automatically raise its page ranking.

Writing SEF URLs

So after learning about the importance of SEF URL in comparison to query strings, we should also see how a SEF is evaluated by the search engine. If you are a keen observer, you might have observed a lot of websites having highlighted content which when clicked leads to a further source of information. When search engines evaluate your website for page ranking they will consider the title and the highlighted text in the content which serves as the keyword. The search engine crawls through the entire content, identifies the keywords and ranks your website according to the demand and supply of the keywords used in the title and content of your blog or website. Though there are other factors to that determine page ranking, the keywords also play a significant role in your webpage search preference.

The art of inserting keywords into your text is not very easy. If you want your webpage to rank well in the search engine listings you should choose keywords that are high in demand and low in supply. Many others use keyword stuffing as one of the techniques for attracting the attention of the search engines, but nowadays search engines like Google have strict restrictions on these. They will ban your website if it is overloaded with keywords.

You can write short descriptive titles which are not overstuffed with keywords. You can use only one relevant keyword in your title for a high page ranking. Self explanatory URLs are preferred by search engines. For example: a good title for this topic would be “Benefits of SEF URLs “

The art of writing great SEF URLs takes time and you are going to gain expertise with time. You should take helpful tips from SEF experts.

Tags: Search Engine Friendly URLs, SEF