Create search engine friendly links

[jonten123 +]

Hello,

The mod search engine friendly links did not make search engine friendly links if I remember correctly. Just human friendly links. So I googled and found this page rewriterulegenerator and made a .htaccess file. So now I can add links to the categories that are search engine friendly. But thats about it. The listings does not seem to be search engine friendly. The spiders do not like ? or = in the address and the listings has both. I might be able to use this on the pages I made in the page editor to make them friendly. What do you guys think about a generator like this? Would it not be good with a mod that made search engine friendly links?

Thanks!

[Lhotch +]

Im not a big fan of spending a lot of time on seo for a couple reasons.

For starters, depending on what your site sells, the ads are hopefully there for only a short amount of time which means if something is indexed and sells a few days later the search engine results are now irrlevant.

With the internet so bloated by sites you chances are slim to non that you as a startup or small site will have any chance of being listed near the top of a general search.

With the above 2 main factors in mind you could spend 40 hours a week for the next 6 months on SEO and search engine placement and it would likely do very little in terms of your sites overall success.

However if you were to use that same 40 hours for 6 months employing more proven traditional means of marketing there is no doubt you would greatly increase traffic.

Please keep in mind I am not saying seo doesnt have its place, simply pointing out that people really need to stop focusing all of their energy on it. Implement things like the SEO mod and other common site changes to allow for rankings and then move on.


Just my 2 cents for what its worth.

[jonten123 +]

Hello,

So you think the Search Engine Friendly URLs mod is worth buying? I read this in the forum: The Search Engine Friendly URLs is really more about human readable URLs than for search engines in this thread.

Thanks!

[Lhotch +]

Originally Posted by jonten123

Hello,

So you think the Search Engine Friendly URLs mod is worth buying? I read this in the forum: The Search Engine Friendly URLs is really more about human readable URLs than for search engines in this thread.

Thanks!

Doing the basics like the seo mod is worthwhile, setting your site title and other small tweaks as necessary is worth doing. Using the 68C and google sitemap is worth doing.

But day in and day out we see people here who are obsessed with SEO and seem to spend all their time employing widgets on their site and fretting over every little detail of SEO and their sites ranking in google.

It just doesnt make sense when you are starting out to spend so much time and energy on it, focus on more traditional marketing and building your site. Then once you are so busy you can no longer run on shared hosting, then consider trying to get on the first page of a google search.

[jonten123 +]

I bought the module and all my links looks fine now. Really friendly. I have just one little question. I have added a link in the sidebar that looks like this: /searchresults.php?searchtext=&type=&state=&minpric e=&maxprice=&Submit=S�k. It searches the whole site for ads and shows them all. Is it possible that spiders get stuck on that un-friendly link and stops crawling the rest of the page?

Thanks!

[Lhotch +]

Originally Posted by jonten123

Is it possible that spiders get stuck on that un-friendly link and stops crawling the rest of the page?

Thanks!

Possible, but not likely. Guess it depends on the search engine and what rules they follow on any given day. This leads me right back into how much time are you going to spend on it? Google doesnt publish exactly how it works because they dont want people cheating. They, like every other search engine, are always changing and evolving and you could probably spend 40 hours a week just playing catch up and trying to figure out what all the major search engines are doing but why??? What are you getting from it?

Ive said it before and I will say it again, if you are relying on search engines for the majority of your traffic, you are going to be sorely disappointed.

[seymourjames +]

Originally Posted by jonten123

Hello,

The spiders do not like ? or = in the address and the listings has both.

This is simply not true. There is no evidence to suggest search engines do not like urls with a ? or = in them. Search engines nowadays quite happily index dynamic urls; Just do some searches and you will see that many dynamic websites make the top spots all the time.

The SEO module is about making human friendly links and this of course has its place in marketing campaigns; For example, you might simply wish to give somebody a memorable url to a category. That is what makes it useful.

There are several threads on the forum about SEO and the basics of undertaking it. Keep it simple and use common sense. Its about content, internal linking and inbound linking. In order to justify spending lots of time, effort and money on SEO you need to have some pretty good reasons. You are in for a long haul if you are in any subject area that is competitive.

Here is just one simple thread covering the basics. Keep in mind that the search engine is trying to make the best recommendation a human would make if they could keep millions of pages in their head. It is trying to simulate how you would decide on making recommendations and use an algorithm to simulate the criteria you are likely to use.

A little SEO

[Casey.Kaden]

Hi,
Im not sure I understand what you mean with;
"Or should they point to sub- pages?".
But it is a good idea to put a link on your primary homepage.
And yes, it is better than linking to a sub-page...
- William
_______________________
charity website | Gealiperu Blog | Posteffective Blog

[seymourjames +]

I am talking about inbound links to your site. The title tags on these should vary but still reflect the the page content. It is also a good idea to link not just to your home page but to inner pages on your site as well (deeplinks). Inner pages being well referenced help to support you home page as they are also "voting" for it as they are linking to it.

However, when all is said and done, SEO is not a panacea or magic bullet. A general marketing plan is much more important Without doubt, it has become increasingly difficult to get great search engine placement with the shear amount of competition on the internet. It is a long haul to get to the top on any terms which are remotely competitive.