SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible

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have for sale. Rather than creating a long URL that has no meaning at all, you could create a URL
for the page featuring the necklace that reads something like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/products/necklace/shells/id=507846_red_scallop

That URL is much shorter, and it’s much more memorable than the longer one. Individuals might
still have difficulty remembering the URL, but it’s more likely they will remember it than one that’s
full of random letters and numbers. This illustrates the two key bits of advice we’re talking about:
URLs should be descriptive without being overly long, and they should give visitors a good idea of
what to expect on the page. Using this method of creating URLs for the pages in your web site, you
open up the potential for including keywords in your URL, which not only helps as crawlers look
at your site, but also when your URL is posted as a link on other web sites or mailing lists.

Note that you should keep URLs limited to as few dynamic parametersas possible (like the product
ID in the example URL). A dynamic parameter is the part of the URL that provides data to a database
so the proper records can be retrieved. The product ID or category ID are good examples of dynamic
parameters. Another good example might be the pages of a blog. Each page will usually contain one
post, or posts for a week or a month. Those pages are most often created using dynamic parameters
in the URL to indicate that the information stored in a database is what should be retrieved when a
user visits the site.

The URL that you select for your web site and create for your web pages is an important piece of
text. Those URLs can be crawled by search engine crawlers, and they should be easy for visitors to
use, to remember, and to understand. These tips, like many of the others covered in the book to
this point, are all small parts of SEO. It’s when all of the small parts come together that your SEO
efforts bring great strides.

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