Search Engine Optimization

I mentioned earlier that content management systems create bad URLs, which result in duplicate content. There is a way around this. It is called rewriting URLs. At the server layer of your website, you can restructure those complex URLs into clean, short and easy to understand URLs. Rewriting does not affect the commands URL passes to the content management system. It only changes the look that users and search engines get. Think of rewriting as putting a pretty mask on ugly, long URLs. Underneath the mask is the same address, that passes the same commands, yet everyone else sees the pretty side.

Rewriting is perfect for SEO purposes, since it eliminates duplicate content issue, and makes URLs look attractive and click able in search results.

The process of rewriting is often called mod_rewrite, since it was first used on Apache server. Now you can rewrite URLs on different servers, but the process is refereed to as rewrite.

Rewriting can get quite complex, as each command has to be assigned a “masked” value which the end user will see. There also has to be a command to create slashes, and ignore different filtering variables. For example if someone filters products by brand, URL should not change, or should only have added anchor #brand. This all has to be specified in the rewrite file, which will overwhelm you, unless you’re a coder. Having a code guru by your side helps a lot!

IMPORTNANT – if you rewrite your URLs, and search engines already have old one in the index, you can lose a lot of traffic! Make sure to 301 redirect all old URLs to the new address. Redirection will move spiders to the correct address, and will also pass link juice from the old pages to new ones. It is a very touchy issue to mess with something that already ranks and works, so if you have page ranking, don’t touch it. Only implement rewrites on new pages, and leave the old ones alone. Sure, it’s more work, harder to do, but would you rather loose traffic and money?

Good luck!