Write URLs For Human Readers & Bots Will Follow
If a normal human being can anticipate what kind of content might be found on this page:
www.rochester-seo.com/articles/page-title-optimization.html
…then you can bet that a search engine will be able to figure it out, too. Search engines are just dumb humans. Here is a tip: Write your file and directory names like you were organizing a book. For example, if you were writing a online book about insects (and spiders, in particular), a good, human readable URL might look like this:
www.InsectWorld.com/spiders/spiderfood.html
A URL that looks like this:
InsectWorld.com/page.asp?cat_id=23&page=15 is bad. Very bad. Crazy bad.
See where I’m going here? If you can read it, so can a search engine.
BTW, don’t over do it. (e.g. don’t make them too long). You should be able to tell a friend what the URL is (out loud, using your own voice) without sounding like a complete idiot.
Well said. As a marketer and SEO person, getting this through in the geek part of our office is sometimes amazingly hard. I’ll show them this post.
Short sweet and to the point. This is a good article its common sense that is just not common enough. I love the point you make that robots are just dumb humans.