Do search engine friendly URLs really matter?

One of the big buzz-words on the internet is ‘search engine optimization', or SEO, that describes the non-exact art of optimizing your web site so that it shows up higher in search engine results.

One of these SEO techniques is to make sure the search term of interest (i.e ‘keyword') appears in your URL, and of course one way to do this is to use keyword-rich or ‘search engine friendly' URLs such as:

http://www.mydomain.com/apple-pie-recipe.html

If you ask 10 SEO experts wether search engine friendly URLs affect search engine ranking, you are likely to get many different answers ranging from "maybe a little" to "it's the most important factor".

The real answer is that no one knows the secret formula for high search engine ranking. However, experts agree that having keywords in the URL is an important part of the equation.

A recent survey over on the Search Engine Roundtable found that 74% of respondents thought that URL keywords were important for Google ranking.

While Joomla can produce search-engine friendly URLs, using a third party SEF extension like sh404SEF® provides numerous advantages if you are serious about your search engine placement.

The main advantage is that sh404SEF® will quickly generate the SEF URL based on what you type in the alias field for your content article. Thus, the URL can be completely different from the actual title of your article which is ideal for maximizing URL keywords.

Another great feature of sh404SEF® is the ability to make permanent URLs. For example, if you make changes to your article title, sh404SEF® will not change the SEF URL. This is critical for sites with a lot of content.

Finally, sh404SEF® solves the well-known duplicate URL issue in Joomla that can lead to penalties in your search engine ranking.

Starting to see the advantages of a dedicated SEF URL manager? Why not check out the full feature set of sh404SEF®.

Last modified on Apr072011
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