Mar 9, 2007
This just occurred to me. I was minding my own business reading some blog comments on one of my favourite SEO blogs, and I spotted an interesting comment which I felt was interesting enough to warrant a visit to the author's site.Yes, posting comments on blogs can drive traffic if you have something to say.
I hovered my mouse over the link, which was in the format www.example.com/?p=75
First thing that pops into my head - "Bah, affiliate link, not interested".
After chewing on this for a while, I decided to visit the link anyway. Turns out it was a page full of interesting content, and the "p=85" was the page ID used by the CMS, as is common practice.
Hmmm
I haven't used dynamic looking URLs for ages, and would never go back to using them. Static looking URLs, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars are...- less likely to change
- look better to humans
- are more indexable
- may give you a slight boost if your URL includes your keywords
- a good static looking URL can also describe the content before you click on it
Now I'm adding to that list.
- A static looking URL is less likely to be mistaken for an affiliate link.
The problem with links that look like affiliate links is that visitors are instantly skeptical from the moment they enter your site.
9 Comments
Very good point. I hadn't thought of that, but your are correct.
Thanks:)
I'm glad you continue to make this point. I keep looking for Ecommerce Solutions were the Pages have Static URLs. The Best I can Find is one that cost is about 60 dollars, but that states that the pages are SEO'd, not that the URLs are static. I would be happy just getting the Rewrite Base to Work for one of my Sites to eliminate the ? and = stuff in the PHP script. Unfortunatly I can't get it to work properly without crashing the Database. I think if Oscommerce, Zen Cart, or one of the other Free Ecommerce Site actually can post Fully Optimized W3C compliant Pages. They could possibly be the Number one Solution on the Net.
Zencart has at least one free plugin for fixing URLs, though I have no idea about how w3c compliant they are.
I'm really surprised that in this day and age there are so few packages with nice URLs out of the box. It's such a critical feature for usability, SEO, and upgradability.
Very good point. I hadn't thought of that, but your are correct.
I'm really surprised that in this day and age there are so few packages with nice URLs out of the box. It's such a critical feature for usability, SEO, and upgradability.
I'm glad you continue to make this point. I keep looking for Ecommerce Solutions were the Pages have Static URLs. The Best I can Find is one that cost is about 60 dollars, but that states that the pages are SEO'd, not that the URLs are static
Very good point THANKS
Hmmm yeha.