SEO friendly URLs

_Whimsical_

As far as being SEO friendly is it ok to include a product code/number in your URL.
Eg is www.randomstore.ie/bag/black-bag more SEO friendly than www.randomstore.ie/bag/123ab-black-bag ?

Or does this matter at all ?
I may be over thinking this. I am completely new to the whole thing.

Student007

_Whimsical_ wrote: »

As far as being SEO friendly is it ok to include a product code/number in your URL.
Eg is www.randomstore.ie/bag/black-bag more SEO friendly than www.randomstore.ie/bag/123ab-black-bag ?

Or does this matter at all ?
I may be over thinking this. I am completely new to the whole thing.

I think it's ok because google only picks up the keywords from the URL. It doesn't matter if there are other numbers and other text... I think...

IRE60

a huge amount of cms systems spit numbers into the url's - its no big one. Do focus on those aspects as they are important - but, the biggest one, Content. Concentrate on your content.

_Whimsical_

Thanks a million for the replies. That is great to know.:)

If I change my URLs will it take long for google to recognise that they're changed?
I've noticed that despite being done two days ago when I search a product google presents the old URL rather than the new one and leads to a "page not found" page.

mneylon

_Whimsical_ wrote: »

Thanks a million for the replies. That is great to know.:)

If I change my URLs will it take long for google to recognise that they're changed?
I've noticed that despite being done two days ago when I search a product google presents the old URL rather than the new one and leads to a "page not found" page.

There's no hard and fast rule on this ..

Generally, however, the speed at which it indexes a change is linked to how often it indexes a site ..

IRE60

In the google search bar pu in the following

site:randonsite.ie

this will show you the current indexed pages. I you narrow the search tools to 'past year and then sort by date - that will tell you exactly which page and when it was indexed.


C

jmcc

IRE60 wrote: »

In the google search bar pu in the following

site:randonsite.ie

Great for ego surfing (my main site has more pages indexed than the Irish Times sites. ) but not as reliable as was a few years ago.

Agree about concentrating on content. When it comes to SEO friendly URLs, the term is a bit distracting as the URL is a very important cue for users navigating a site. It gives them a sense of information hierarchy in the site so that they can understand what level they are at in the site.

A set of simple and effective navigation links for both users and search engines is far more important than SEO friendly URLs. (Speaking as a search engine developer and the information architect/designer for a >400 million page website ).

Also a sitemap for search engines would be important as it would help SEs find your content rather than ploughing through each link and following links.

Regards...jmcc

_Whimsical_

Thanks for the advice IRE60.
The last date that seems to show when I do the "site:domain" thing is Feb 8th, even though I added pages since then and they are found in the index before I try narrowing by date. Maybe I'll try and set up some sort of redirect up until it gets to grips with my new URLs.


Thanks very much also JMCC too. That's good to know that content is more important than these little extras. I'm not sure if my content is as good as it should be as it's a store site and product descriptions only give me so much scope for adding relevant content. I'm trying though!

The Apprentice

This is very relevant to the problems you are having whimsical

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/five-steps-to-seo-friendly-site-url-structure/59813/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=linkedin&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SearchEngineJournal+%28Search+Engine+Journal%29


Have a quick read