Where to put a page ID in a URL?
-
Hello,
My company is going to change URLs to example.com/category or example.com/product.
When we will change the URLs to product or category pages somehow we have to check whether the requested page is from category table in DB or from products table (this gives much speed to page load time).
So we have to choose how to make the different product and category pages.
Programmers said that we need to insert id to URL.So the question is: Which is the better way to place an id to an URL?
example.com/product-name?id=111
Or maybe we should use some other punctuation mark to separate id from product name?
p.s. I have read Dynamic URLs vs. static URLs by Google and it still didn't answered which is the best for all of the pages.
Somehow others solve this problem by typing only the names to the URL, but could anyone tell what that technology should be?
-
As I have seen somewhere that underscore "_" unites the names and Google looks at it like one word with no spaces.
Wouldn't it be bad for long product names?
example.com/2010_chrysler_grand_voyager_2l would be the same as write example.com/2010chryslergrandvoyager2l ?
-
Just trying to get the best out of everything
In this case, doesn't product-name-111 is all keywords for a page? My product if my product page doesn't consist of 111 it would make a mess for Google.
I can give one example that could messes up:
example.com/cars-1963And 1963 isn't a year nor it's a model number of a car, it's the ID of a catalog.
-
I would select a modified option #3 (modified in that I used all dashes)
I've seen this work. VBSEO (a vBulletin forum plugin that rewrites URLs) uses this format, where the ID is at the end of the URL. I've not seen any ill effects and this plugin has used this format for years.
Don't get too hung up on the URL structure. It's like worrying about what color to paint your walls when your house has structural issues. URLs are window dressing. They help SEO, but only slightly.
-
I would use example.com/product_name-111
I believe you need to do a mod re-write to get the URL to display the way you want it, but others will be better placed to advice you on this than I am.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best to Combine Listing URLs? Are 300 Listing Pages a "Thin Content" Risk?
We operate www.metro-manhattan.com, a commercial real estate website. There about 550 pages. About 300 pages are for individual listings. About 150 are for buildings. Most of the listings pages have 180-240 words. Would it be better from an SEO perspective to have multiple listings on a single page, say all Chelsea listings on the Chelsea neighborhood page? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by having separate URLs for each listing? Are we at risI for a thin cogent Google penalty? Would the same apply to building pages (about 150)? Sample Listing: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/364-madison-ave-office-lease-1802sf Sample Building: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/for-a-new-york-office-space-rental-consider-one-worldwide-plaza-825-eighth-avenue My concern is that the existing site architecture may result in some form of Google penalty. If we have to consolidate these pages what would be the best way of doing so? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
How much does URLs with CAPS and URLs with non-CAPS existing on an IIS site matter nowadays?
I work on a couple ecommerce sites that are on IIS. Both sites have return a 200 header status for the CAPS and non CAPS version of the URLs. While I suppose it would be ok if the canonicals pointed to the same version of the page, in some cases it doesn't (ie; /Home-Office canonicalizes to itself and /home-office canonicalizes to itself). I came across this article (http://www.searchdiscovery.com/blog/case-sensitive-urls-and-seo-case-matters/) that is a few years old and I'm wondering how much of an issue it is and how I would determine if it is/isn't?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OfficeFurn0 -
Outside Top 10 Even though - Higher Domain/Page Authority/Higher On Page Grade
Hi, Note: this is for Australian search results - for people in Perth.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HeadStud
The website is: http://thedj.com.au I am trying to optimise for the keyword 'perth wedding dj', but also 'wedding dj perth' and for some reason my website isn't even in the top 10 results. Here is what's weird though: My on-page grade with the On-Page Grader for the keyword 'wedding DJ perth' is an 'A' for http://thedj.com.au (http://awesomescreenshot.com/0135135hca) When checking the Keyword Difficulty in the Google Australia search enginge for 'wedding DJ perth' - there are 4 results which have a lower domain authority than 15 (in fact one result has a domain authority of 1) - http://awesomescreenshot.com/03f5134zd1 http://thedj.com.au has a Domain Authority of 23/100 and a Page Authority of 34/100. (http://awesomescreenshot.com/0bb5134tb8) So seeing as the page has gotten an A for on-page optimisation for the keyword 'wedding DJ Perth' and has a higher domain authority then many results in the top 10... why isn't it in the Top 10?! Bonus Question:
Why is DJ Avi showing up at the top of search results (Local listing) depsite the fact that:
a) He has no website to link to
b) No reviews for his listing
c) No keywords that I can see (other than the fact that he's a DJ)
Screenshot: http://awesomescreenshot.com/05151349cb Meanwhile our Local Places - Thanks,
Kosta
http://www.headstudios.com.au0 -
Google indexing only 1 page out of 2 similar pages made for different cities
We have created two category pages, in which we are showing products which could be delivered in separate cities. Both pages are related to cake delivery in that city. But out of these two category pages only 1 got indexed in google and other has not. Its been around 1 month but still only Bangalore category page got indexed. We have submitted sitemap and google is not giving any crawl error. We have also submitted for indexing from "Fetch as google" option in webmasters. www.winni.in/c/4/cakes (Indexed - Bangalore page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_blr_cakes.xml) 2. http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 (Not indexed - Hyderabad page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_hyd_cakes.xml) I tried searching for "hyderabad site:www.winni.in" in google but there also http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 this link is not coming, instead of this only www.winni.in/c/4/cakes is coming. Can anyone please let me know what could be the possible issue with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abhihan0 -
Spaces in URL line
Hi Gurus, I recently made the mistake of putting a space into a URL line between two words that make up my primary key word. Think www.example.com/Jelly Donuts/mmmNice.php instead of www.example.com/JellyDonuts/mmmNice.php This mistake now needed fixing to www.example.com/Jelly Donuts/mmmNice.php to pass W3, but has been in place for a while but most articles/documents under 'Jelly Donuts' are not ranking well (which is probably the obvious outcome of the mistake). I am wondering whether the best solution from an SEO ranking viewpoint is to: 1. Change the article directory immediately to www.example.com/JellyDonuts/mmmNice.php and rel=canonical each article to the new correct URL. Take out the 'trash' using robots.txt or to 301 www.example.com/Jelly Donut to the www.example.com/JellyDonut directory? or perhaps something else? Thanks in advance for your help with this sticky (but tasty) conundrum, Brad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BM70 -
Merging your google places page with google plus page.
I have a map listing showing for the keyword junk cars for cash nj. I recently created a new g+ page and requested a merge between the places and the + page. now when you do a search you see the following. Junk Cars For Cash NJ LLC
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars
junkcarforcashnj.com/
Google+ page - Google+ page the first hyperlink takes me to the about page of the G+ and the second link takes me to the posts section within g+. Is this normal? should i delete the places account where the listing was originally created? Or do i leave it as is? Thanks0 -
Changing URL Structure
We are going to be relaunching our website with a new URL structure. My question is, how is it best to deal with the migration process in terms of old URLS appearing whilst we launch the new ones. How best should we launch the new structure, considering we've in the region of 10,000 pages currently indexed in Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NeilTompkins0 -
How do I set up a 301 redirect if the default settings for our web servers create multiple URLs for the same page?
How do I set up a 301 redirect if the default settings for our web servers create multiple URLs for the same page but only views it as one page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ibex0