What is a Search Engine Friendly URL?

A search engine friendly is exactly what it says on the tin, It is a web site URL which has been altered to be "friendly" or easily read by a search engine. The URL helps the search engine to determine page content. One of the main advantages of this is that a search engine friendly URL has been re-written and does not display the inner workings of a web site.

What Makes Up A Search Engine Friendly URL?

A search engine friendly URL will be typically made using the page title, for example; if your web page title is called "wild world" then the URL will most likely contain the phrase "wild-world" somewhere within it. The URL is generally shorter and easier read.

How Important Is A Search Engine Friendly URL?

By correctly assigning a friendly URL to your web site, you will help achieve a better search engine ranking. Using complex (standard) URL's generated by a content management system can be a major problem for search engine spiders which get caught in a repetitive loop whilst indexing your web site, and will eventually ignore many pages in your site, resulting in your web site not being indexed correctly.

The majority of internet users will not be able to remember a complex URL as there is simply to much information in it to remember. A friendly URL makes it easier for just about anyone to remember a URL, a properly written URL contains keywords which are memorable to most. Below is an example of a non friendly url:

And here is the same URL in a friendly format:

How Do I Create A Search Engine Friendly URL?

Typically a Search Engine Friendly URL is created using a Re-Write script, there are various we frameworks already include this facility, some of which are:

• Java Server Faces has URL rewriting via the PrettyFaces: URL rewriting extension for JSF
• Ruby on Rails has built-in URL rewriting via Routes
• Apache HTTP Server has URL rewriting provided by the mod_rewrite module
• URL Rewrite is available as an extension to Microsoft IIS

If you are somewhat unsure of how to accomplish a Search Engine Friendly URL, it is recommended you leave it to an advanced developer as achieving a Search Engine URL can be very tricky or complicated. If you are using a pre-built content management system, many of these include the option to automatically enable this facility.

Conclusion

If you have a web site, in particular a blog. You must ensure you have a search engine friendly URL assigned to every page to ensure your web site is indexed correctly.