Google Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide - Manual (Page 8)

Google's Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest version at Google Webmaster Central
Below is another example, showing a URL on our domain for a page containing an article about the
rarest baseball cards. The words in the URL might appeal to a search user more than an ID number
such as "www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/article/102125/" would.
A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards]
A deeper page, with a URL that reflects the type of content found on it, appears as a result
Google is good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they're quite complex, but spending the
time to make your URLs as simple as possible for both users and search engines can help. Some
webmasters try to achieve this by rewriting their
dynamic URLs to static ones; while Google is fine with
this, we'd like to note that this is an advanced procedure and, if done incorrectly, could cause crawling
issues with your site. To learn even more about good URL structure, we recommend this Webmaster
Help Centre page on
creating Google-friendly URLs .
Good practices for URL structure
• Use words in URLs - URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure are
friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be more
willing to link to them.
Avoid:
•
using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs
•
choosing generic page names such as "page1.html"
•
using excessive keywords such as "baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseball-
cards.htm"
•
Create a simple directory structure - Use a directory structure that organises your content
well and is easy for visitors to navigate on your site. Try using your directory structure to
indicate the type of content found at that URL.
Avoid:
•
having deep nesting of subdirectories, such as ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/
dir6/page.html"
•
using directory names that have no relation to the content in them