Search Engine Friendly URLs Getting Out of Hand - Use SmartURLs
Posted by Matt Johnson | 2007-08-16 13:08:33
I read the blog on SEOmoz quite a bit. A while ago they redeveloped their website and implemented search engine friendly URLs. All the URLs for the blog are the title of the blog post, with spaces as hypens. Search engine friendly, yes, the best way to do search engine friendly URLs, no. For example, take a look at part of an email:
Dudes, check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/advice-on-landing-pages-from-the-experts-more-details-on-the-seomoz-contest-our-first-landing-page-submission. It's interesting...
Am I the only one who sees a problem there? The URL is over 130 characters long! Wow, it's totally search engine friendly, and it totally can't be printed in a newspaper, magazine or in any other print form. You can't say it over the phone, and you might not even be able to enter it on some form fields. It's just too long. The problem could easily be fixed with just another field in your database and some modifications in your code.
When I developed this blog, I put a unique SmartURL field in my BlogPost table. Doing this allows me to specify what the search engine friendly URL should be, just in case I have a really long title. There are a few benefits to this:
- The URL can be shorter, allowing it to be in printed form, in newspapers, magazines, brochures, textbooks, manuals, etc.
- It is easier to say over the phone
- You can match up better with the keyphrase you are targetting for that page
- It's just plain easier to remember!
Sure search engine friendly URLs are cool, but do it the smart way, make a SmartURL field in your database.