product names in url

[cdorling]

I'm about to update our shop, & I'm still looking (confusing myself?) with all the options. As we're in effect starting afresh, wondered if anyone had any thoughts on the importance of product names in the url, as not all carts/shops offer this - correct me if I'm wrong, but I think latest Pinnacle and Cubecart do, Zencart doesn't.

[Chelltune]

Oscommerce has contribution to add search engine friendly urls.

[PrettyPaws]

It is very useful, EKM now has it.

[RayB]

Personally, I would not operate a site without SEF url's - e-commerce or otherwise. There is no need to in this day and age. There is a search engine benefit - but there is a MASSIVE human benefit - especially when trying to attract links.

If you wanted to link to a widget shop and had 2 choices, which of the following would you link to:

1. widgetshop .com/red-widgets/

or

2. widgetshop .com/?febuiofew46498+948+49849+985465615dskjej.index.ht ml

I rest my case........:)

[sysops]

Personally, I would not operate a site without SEF url's - e-commerce or otherwise. There is no need to in this day and age. There is a search engine benefit - but there is a MASSIVE human benefit - especially when trying to attract links.


I'm going to have to disagree there. A lot of SEOs talk a lot of crap about this subject, so I've taken a personal interest in it and spent quite a bit of time experimenting. I've found no evidence whatsoever to suggest that you get any kind of search engine advantage by having SEF urls.

As for the human factor, I don't think it makes any difference. People don't link to urls by typing the url. They invariably copy and paste. In fact, you could argue that by having a SEF url it might encourage some people to type it, some of whom will inevitably miss-type it.

There may be an aesthetic advantage (totally subjective), but that's about it.

[sirearl]

I'm going to have to disagree there. A lot of SEOs talk a lot of crap about this subject, so I've taken a personal interest in it and spent quite a bit of time experimenting. I've found no evidence whatsoever to suggest that you get any kind of search engine advantage by having SEF urls.



There are some very wealthy SEO's who talk a load of crap.

But maybe this will help you understand a bit.

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/search_engine_friendly_urls/

Earl

[sysops]

But maybe this will help you understand a bit.

I've read a great deal about the subject. More importantly, I've put quite a bit of effort into experiments to test the theory, and my results show no measurable difference.

[Jonesy]

I'm going to have to disagree there. A lot of SEOs talk a lot of crap about this subject, so I've taken a personal interest in it and spent quite a bit of time experimenting. I've found no evidence whatsoever to suggest that you get any kind of search engine advantage by having SEF urls.

As for the human factor, I don't think it makes any difference. People don't link to urls by typing the url. They invariably copy and paste. In fact, you could argue that by having a SEF url it might encourage some people to type it, some of whom will inevitably miss-type it.

There may be an aesthetic advantage (totally subjective), but that's about it.

While it may not affect ranking much, even Matt Cutts has stated it helps the spiders. I believe Yahoo weight it more than Google also. The keywords will also be bolded in SERPS results - the CTR improvement alone justifies it for me.

It's relatively easy to URL rewrite these days, so I would never argue to not do it!

[sirearl]

I've read a great deal about the subject. More importantly, I've put quite a bit of effort into experiments to test the theory, and my results show no measurable difference.

The URL is one of the lesser important elements in SEO except where the domain name is the keyword.

It may be that your testing is on to small a scale for any significance to show ,but I can assure you it does have an effect.even if slight.

Earl

[worlddom]

Virtually all open source software solutions have an SEF module and a lot of very astute SEO experts recommend using them. I would suggest that this is an area to go with the flow on.

Spiders don't particularly like dynamic urls. If you create static sef keyword oriented urls then there is a much higher chance of indexing and higher ranking. Search for any term and view the urls of the results, compare dynamic to sef.

Apart from the SEO benefits, keyword urls within SE results are more likely to clicked.

[RayB]

I'm going to have to disagree there. A lot of SEOs talk a lot of crap about this subject, so I've taken a personal interest in it and spent quite a bit of time experimenting. I've found no evidence whatsoever to suggest that you get any kind of search engine advantage by having SEF urls.


As Jonesy said, if your keyword is in the url it gets bolded in the SERP's. That is most definitely a search engine benefit - it helps with CTR :)

IMO it also contributes to overall page relevance with regards to onpage SEO.

Finally, it is accepted that keyword stuffed urls (say 5 keywords separated by hyphens) are flagged as spammy and can work against you. Therefore it is logical to suppose that a sensible keyword url has the opposite effect and works in your favour.

[ken_uk]

Technically I think Matt Cutts is talking out of his backside if he reckons spiders find word based urls friendlier than parameter based ones.

A spider and indexing system should find it easier to understand a hierarchical based numerical or word based system than it would understand urls that are basically random due to the fact they could be any words....

A program can understand numbers easier than words...

Also, it makes sod all difference to a spider these days (it may have back in the stone age) if a url is word based or parameter based (ie with ? and & in the url). If anything, the latter will be easier programatically for a spider to deal with.

Both methods risk problems if they go to deep, ie several levels of parameters or folders in a url - it depends on how well the spider likes recursing down levels, and how much they like the site, as they will no doubt go to greater lengths to spider a top site than a new unknown entity.

Sites with both methods rank very well in the serps, so there is no technical basis I can see at all for one over the other.

....

Apart from the fact google still does silly things like give importance sometimes to keywords in urls etc....

There are disadvantages to rewriting, such as the fact it often leads to redirects, and extra overhead on the server.

...

But I totally agree that the benefit of the 'bolding' and 'readability' is true ( but the readability aspect depends on the end user, personally I often find s/e friendly urls spammy if overdone to a huge extent, but great if done well).

I see no reason not to go for s/e friendly urls if you can...

On smaller sites, its a lot easier to do than massive sites, so why not really?

[RayB]

Good balanced post Ken!

[gnaldrett]

I'm still learning in this field so tell me if I speak out of place!...

I was under the impression that if you use for example a Google sitemap, the spidering process is more controllable, thus helping your sites overall SEO effectiveness. Can this method not be used to point at your dynamically generated content also??

Regards,

Gordon

[RayB]

I'm still learning in this field so tell me if I speak out of place!...

I was under the impression that if you use for example a Google sitemap, the spidering process is more controllable, thus helping your sites overall SEO effectiveness. Can this method not be used to point at your dynamically generated content also??

Regards,

Gordon

These days search engines can crawl pretty much most Url strings - but that is an indexing issue not an SEO issue if you see what I mean?

[gnaldrett]

These days search engines can crawl pretty much most Url strings - but that is an indexing issue not an SEO issue if you see what I mean?

Thanks Ray, like I say - still learning! :rolleyes:

Regards,

Gordon

[PrettyPaws]

As Jonesy said, if your keyword is in the url it gets bolded in the SERP's. That is most definitely a search engine benefit - it helps with CTR :)

Agreed, and if that is the ONLY benifit, it's still worth it :D You must remember the question didn't ask about only about SEO, just if there was a benifit. Which there is.

[cdorling]

Agreed, and if that is the ONLY benifit, it's still worth it :D You must remember the question didn't ask about only about SEO, just if there was a benifit. Which there is.

When I posed the question in my simple head, I was only thinking about SEO, but I'm very grateful it's been broadened out and thoroughly discussed. When you join a new forum, you never know if you'll be made to look a loon by the more experienced posters. Thats certainly not the case here, and it looks like others have benefitted, too. So thanks to all.

It's a good job I'm enjoying reading about ecommerce, as well as the work ahead. I've as good as decided to plump for CubeCart, but even so it looks like i need to bear in mind the 'spamming' issue and no doubt many others, too. So I'll be back ;)