Accessible URLs

Search Engine Friendly URLs

As a search engine traverses a site in its attempt to locate content, it actively looks for links that contain a URL.  (It should be noted that not all links contain URLs.  Some, for instance, will take a site visitor to another place on the same page and not to a different page.)  Individual webpages are identified with a unique web address or Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that generally includes the site name followed by other identifiers.  In the beginning of the web these identifiers were associated with the location of a unique HTML file and often took the form: http://sitename/foldername/filename. 

These pages are considered “static” HTML pages since each page and all elements of the page are stored as a file and do not change unless the website operator changes individual files.  For instance, if the website owner wants to make a design change that affects the entire site she/he would need to adjust ALL site pages individually. 

However, as we’ve discussed in previous parts of this tutorial, many of today’s websites are generated dynamically through a combination of special programming language and an associated database that stores website information.  Yet even though many sites no longer use individual files as webpages (i.e., page is created as the user visits the site), the web address of each webpage is still unique.

So what does this mean for search engine marketing?  In general, search engines have had little problem navigating through sites built with static HTML webpages but the same is not true for dynamic sites.  The problem is that dynamic sites present a web address that is based on the scripting program that is being run.  For instance, the URL for a search on Amazon.com for books dealing with “marketing strategy” may produce a URL that looks like this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=br_ss_hs/104-9233860-6656738?platform=gurupa&url=index%3Dblended&keywords=marketing+strategy

Historically, search engines have experienced difficulty in indexing pages with a dynamically generated web address (the reasons are mostly technical in nature and beyond the scope of this tutorial).  And while today’s search engines are much better at indexing these pages, marketers are still encouraged to avoid using dynamically generated URLs especially on important information content pages. 

To correct this problem, marketers should seek website software that allows for the creation of “search engine friendly” (SEF) URLs.  Essentially SEF URLs rewrite the dynamic URL in a form that is more representative of the URL of a static HTML page.  For instance, for KnowThis.com the dynamic web address of this tutorial is:

http://www.knowthis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=326&Itemid=646

By using methods of creating SEF URLs, the address for this tutorial takes on the more common HTML look:

http://www.knowthis.com/tutorials/search-engine-marketing/accessible-urls.htm

For web marketers, who are not skilled at handling adjustments to web servers, moving their site to SEF URLs is something that should be done in discussion with their web operations staff or outside web hosting company.