Sphinn - Top 10 Fatal URL Design Mistakes

65
Sphinn It!

Top 10 Fatal URL Design Mistakes

Went Hot: July 3, 2008 - 9:11 am
Posted By: Wiep 366 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://seo2.0.onreact.com)
Category: SEO

URL design? Is there any design involved at all in deciding how your Internet address and directory structure will look like? Yes, there is, or at least there should be! Nonetheless I see the same mistakes daily all over the place as if URLs wouldn’t matter at all.

8 Comments

Who Desphunn This (0)

Comments

from LawnchairLarry 366 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Straightforward practical tips, that's how we like them! Don't forget to read the mod_rewrite cheat sheet if you need to redirect URLs.

from onreact 366 days ago # - show/hide this comment

Votes: -1 | Vote:

+ -

Yeah, after a few humoristic adn slightly off topic posts I had the urge to write something concise and useful.

from LawnchairLarry 366 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Onreact, could you repair the CSS design flaw (the body text is placed below the archives) that makes your blog look horrible in Firefox and Opera, please?

from onreact 366 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Wow. Which Firefox and Opera? I tested with both. Can you send me a screenshot? onreact at onreact.com

from codejutsu 366 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Some of these are quite obvious to current webmasters but should start a discussion about proper SEO URLs based on the type of content a publisher puts out. A news-heavy site shouldn't ditch date-based URLs just because this article says so. Dates in the URL could be incorporated sparingly and strategically in a news category but nowhere else, e.g. press releases. Some CMS engines like Joomla still have mechanical ID numbers in the URLs even when the SEF routines are enabled. Though somewhat ugly, it actually keeps the site from returning a 404 error even if the alias to the article changes with the title.

from onreact 366 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

codejutsu: I advise you to read the article cosely before pointing things out which are already incorporated in it. Ut says "If you’re not into breaking news stop using the date as your most important first part of the URL."

Also the number/alias issue has been mentioned in the WordPress part.

from yojpotter2 365 days ago # - show/hide this comment

Votes: -1 | Vote:

+ -

Thanks for this post..I will surely keep in mind not to do such mistakes on my site's URL.

from onreact 364 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

pageoneresults: generally I don't click news from "2005" :-)

As to the number vs headline slug issue: I wrote it in the post, use both ideally: 123/angelina-jolie-naked
this was you can change the headline without losing visitors. Of course you have to redirect them to to the same URL.