To Rewrite or Not To Rewrite. That is the Question.

To Rewrite or Not To
Rewrite. That is the Question.

Today I spoke to a potential client who had been told that URL rewriting was no longer necessary. He would not disclose who had told him this but did pretty much tell me exactly what was said. I then provided him with a more complete picture of URL rewriting and its positives and negatives. I was a bit disturbed that somebody would recommend not bothering with URL rewriting solely due to a change in the Google webmaster guidelines, so much so that it has spurred me on to write this post. Enjoy!

The Past

Over the years web
sites have shifted from simple static html to dynamic database driven monsters largely
due to the rise of Content Management Systems and E-commerce. This change has caused
huge problems for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in the past due to the use
of dynamic URLs containing parameters.

http://www.arandomwebsite.com/product.aspx?pid=416&catid=1&itemid=4
etc.

In the past Google
(which we know to process between 70 to 80 percent of all UK search traffic) has stated that it will not include
pages like this in it index. This theoretically meant that a dynamic site would
not get indexed by Google. In reality this wasn’t true although indexing was
very unstable and a bit random with this type of site.

The answer used to be
either to generate a static version of the site or to rewrite the URLs to remove
the parameters.

http://www.arandomwebsite.com/product.aspx?pid=416&catid=1&itemid=4
would become http://www.arandomwebsite.com/french/cheese/brie.aspx

This would allow the
site to appear static and get indexed properly. The down side is that the
desired result can be difficult to achieve (especially on an IIS machine) and
requires internal links to be modified amongst other things.

What’s Changed?

Well recently Google
has removed its’ statement saying they will not index dynamic URLs, meaning URL
rewriting is no longer needed to fix this issue.

So is URL Rewriting Still
Worth Doing?

Well the answer is
YES. Google still states that having multiple parameters in a URL can cause
issues with indexing. Also Google calls URL rewriting in this circumstance “good
practice”.

Another key benefit
of URL rewriting is allows URLs to be more human readable and contain keywords.
Human readable hierarchic URLs are good for usability as they allow a user to
see roughly where they are in the site at a glance. Also experimentation has
shown that having the target keyword in your URL has a positive impact on
rankings.

To Conclude

Although URL
rewriting is difficult to implement successfully, it is still a very powerful
step towards creating a successful Internet presence and should definitely be
considered. Ideally this issue should be addressed during the development of a
new site rather than as an after thought although it is still possible to
implement after a sites launch.

Links

Google Modified Guidelines

Apache mod_rewrite Documentation