Why You Need to Rewrite Your URL’s

In a world of cut-throat competition in search engine indexing, small advantages can make a huge difference in ranking on SERPs or being lost forever in the world of unranked pages. So how can you assure that your page stands out in the eyes of search engine spiders? One important way to improve your chances is by rewriting your URLs within your site.

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Clean URLs

URLs can actually be a powerful tool in search engine optimization or they can actually work against your site’s optimization chances. URLs can be classified as either dynamic (dirty) or static. For instance, a dynamic URL may be http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=4&view=basic. However, a cleaned up version of this same site (or the static version) may be http://www.example.com/4/basic.html. Static URLS have a much greater visibility in the eyes of search engines, and thus are much more desirable.

Clean URLs have many more benefits as well. A URL containing information regarding the site clearly communicates its purpose to a user, along with allowing a user to remember the title and content of the site more accurately. This is a huge plus when you would like a web surfer to remember how to find you!

How about the Webmaster? Intuitively named URLs are a plus here as well, enabling the site administrator to easily migrate the site from one programming language to another, should the need arise. If such a migration is necessary, the page titles will be able to stay the same, rather than be renamed. Static page names also aid an administrator during routine maintenance ? dynamic names set the scene for possible mistakes resulting in broken links.

A final advantage of using clean URLs is that of hiding your site technology. Using a string such as http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=4&view=basic will reveal much of the structure used in building the page. Keeping your URLs tidy will hide your decisions and make work harder for hackers instead of handing the keys to your site over to them!

Keep URLs as short as possible

Short URLs have many of the same advantages of clean URLs. Short names can be easily remembered, easily typed without mistakes and descriptive of the page content. Many mistakes with page direction could potentially be avoided with shorter, descriptive URL names.

Use dashes rather than underscores

The use of underscores has previously been the preference of website owners, mainly due to the greater readability (by the human eye) of such site names. However, as SEO becomes more prevalent in the online world, dashers are taking the place of such underscores.

Before the optimization of a site for search engines was a concern, underscores in site names took the place of spaces in titles. Names were much easier to read as this_is_an_example rather than thisisanexample. However, with the exponential growth of websites, competition has grown to rank well in search engines rather than by word of mouth.

In such a world, a URL name of SEO_techniques will only register in search engines under the search for both words along with the underscore. However, the website entitled SEO-techniques will register under searches for ?SEO?, ‘techniques? and ?SEO techniques?. The advantage here is obvious.

Lowercase and uppercase letter usage

The case when using uppercase or lowercase letters is nearly the same as that of dashes rather than underscoring. The human eye can much more easily define the words ThisIsAnExample.com, however, thisisanexample.com will eliminate the need for your customers to capitalize the words. Using capital letters in your URL can cause the search engines to exclude your site unless the searcher is using the same capitalization found in your site name.

So I know I need to clean up my URLs. What now?

If I?ve succeeded in convincing you of the benefits of a clean, static URL, you?ll need to know how to change your names over to more readable, secure and more intuitive names. This is accomplished by setting a system on your host server that allows the server to interpret your new URL formats. Rewriting URL names is actually a method of masking the dynamic URL names with static names. In order to accomplish the setting up of this system, you?ll want to make use of one of the following rewriting tools or engines listed below. Both free and fee-based tools are given:

Online, open source tools:

• free online URL rewriting
• open Source URL Rewriter for .NET / IIS / ASP.NET
• open Source rewrite-module tuned for ASP.NET 2.0
• mod_rewrite

The most commonly used free rewriting engine is mod_rewrite. This module from the Apache HTTP server allows you to easily manipulate your URL names. This takes place by first enabling the ReWriteEngine on your Apache server and defining the rewrite rules desired. The user may set conditions for each rule, allowing the rewriting of requests as they come in.

In terms of optimization, this tool can be helpful for complex URLs containing more than 2 parameters.

Fee-based tools:

• ISAPI_Rewrite
• IISRewrite

ISAPI (Internet Server Application Program Interface) functions similarly to mod_rewrite, however, it is designed specifically for Microsoft’s IIS (Internet Information Server). IISRewrite is a stripped down implementation of Apache’s mod_rewrite modules for IIS. This is a rule-based rewriting engine that allows an administrator to manipulate URLs on the fly in IIS.

I hope I?ve made clear the reasons behind rewriting your URL. Clean, short URLs without underscoring or uppercase lettering can be such an advantage to your company when implementing SEO techniques. This is an amazing place to start in order to give your site a needed boost, increasing traffic and therefore your own profits.

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