Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : SEO / SEM Discussions : Search Engine Friendly URLs

[Mansoor]

How effective is this methodology using mod rewite to convert a [.php] to [.htm]

What about using a url for affiliates that have the same landing page. Won't the SE penalize for having duplicate content?

[Feydakin]

Waste of time to rewrite php to htm or vice versa..

For the landing page you should have that populated with slightly different info for each affiliate or simply make it a noindex page since you really don't want it to rank for anything anyway.. At least if I understand how you are referring to your affiliate landing pages.. This would be the page on your website that your affiliates send people to, right?

[Mansoor]

Yes by landing page I mean the page where my affiliates send people. That page writes a cookie into the vistor's browser and takes him to the main index page.

[the_pm]

How effective is this methodology using mod rewite to convert a [.php] to [.htm]

This by itself is useless. However, there is a benefit to converting new URLs to existing indexed page names if you're redesigning your site and your new site happens to use PHP where the old one used .htm.

[Feydakin]

@Mansoor - unless you want the page to rank for something then I would just noindex it and forget about it.. I'm assuming that the visitors only land there long enough to get their cookie set and then pushed on to a product page..

[QualityHost]

Actually, we are trying to implement something like this:

http://www.idevdirect.com/module_seo.php

Has anyone tried it? Any actual SEO benefits or vice versa?

[inway]

Rewriting .php to .htm is not a total waste.

[Melnel]

Well since both php and html are both indexed with equal facility by the search engines perhaps you could explain what you mean?

[inway]

It is not equally indexed when it comes to a dynamic .php extension websites.

[Melnel]

That is totally dependent upon the way the URLs are formulated, not upon the fact that they are .php pages.

Take a look at this very site and this very page:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...65#post5062865

This is what the URL of this page looks like yet Google have indexed 1,090,000 pages from this site.

[inway]

Originally Posted by Melnel

That is totally dependent upon the way the URLs are formulated, not upon the fact that they are .php pages.

Take a look at this very site and this very page:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...65#post5062865

This is what the URL of this page looks like yet Google have indexed 1,090,000 pages from this site.

I agree

[justachild]

Hmm, does this mean the SEF URL is not an important factor?

[Website themes]

Yes it is but not as much as backlinks. Do any search on google and you'll find that keywords in a website's url are bolded. So Google obviously considers keywords in URLs as a ranking factor. Its not the only factor nor the most important one that affects a site's rankings .

[Melnel]

Originally Posted by Website themes

Yes it is but not as much as backlinks. Do any search on google and you'll find that keywords in a website's url are bolded. So Google obviously considers keywords in URLs as a ranking factor. Its not the only factor nor the most important one that affects a site's rankings .

*sigh* The little program which creates the SERP display and the algorithm which ranks the sites are totally and completely different animals - bolded keywords in the URL simple mean that the keywords are in the URL and nothing more.

[Website themes]

Originally Posted by Melnel

*sigh* The little program which creates the SERP display and the algorithm which ranks the sites are totally and completely different animals - bolded keywords in the URL simple mean that the keywords are in the URL and nothing more.

You've bolded your sigh to give it extra emphasis or to differentiate it from the rest of your post. Keywords in URLs are bolded to indicate that they are important. Why else would google bold keywords in urls?