SEO Question about URLs

[Farmer77]

Which is better for SEO?

SomeWebsite.com/Stuff/

or

SomeWebsite.com/Stuff.html


I was going to use the 2nd way until I noticed that Chris uses the 1st way on his websites for each individual page. So is the 1st way better for SEO purposes ?

[Chris]

Yes.

A couple reasons.

1. .html will be considered a keyword in your URL, a useless keyword. Might as well leave it out.

2. you effectively hide what type of backend system you use, which could be helpful for security.

3. one less thing for people to remember/mess up when typing in.

[Johnny Gulag]

Yes.

A couple reasons.

1. .html will be considered a keyword in your URL, a useless keyword. Might as well leave it out.

2. you effectively hide what type of backend system you use, which could be helpful for security.

3. one less thing for people to remember/mess up when typing in.Plus it is prettier :)

[Farmer77]

Yes.

A couple reasons.

1. .html will be considered a keyword in your URL, a useless keyword. Might as well leave it out.

2. you effectively hide what type of backend system you use, which could be helpful for security.

3. one less thing for people to remember/mess up when typing in.

Thanks. Learning something new everyday.

[guruwebllc]

i think .html are more search engine friendly for some reason.

[Chris]

they aren't

[Webbanner]

HTML easily search included

[stymiee]

HTML easily search included

I guess you didn't read the post before yours?

[KLB]

Although they aren't necessary for SEO purposes, I like to use .html for traditional reasons. To me /bla.html represents a page and /bla/ represents a folder root. It's just an aesthetic thing. The only site I have that uses something other than .html for pages is a vBulletin forum I purchased from someone else, which uses .php. Using .html as opposed to .php or .asp also helps with the hiding of back end systems as it is more generic.

[andyf]

IMO if your site have some dynamic content pages then you won’t be able to use .html for that page you will probably have to use .php or .asp depending on the backend script.
For SEO, file extension don't have that much importance what matters is the content, number of backlinks, it’s optimization etc…

[KLB]

IMO if your site have some dynamic content pages then you won’t be able to use .html for that page you will probably have to use .php or .asp depending on the backend script.
For SEO, file extension don't have that much importance what matters is the content, number of backlinks, it’s optimization etc…

I use .html on my sites with no problem. Here are some examples of some of my dynamic sites that use .html extensions:

http://EnvironmentalChemistry.com is a completely dynamic sites in particular the chemical database, uses .htaccess rewrites to create normal URLs instead of query strings;
http://GFXContests.com is a vBulletin powered site like WebsitePublisher.net but it uses .html extensions instead of .php;
http://EnglishRussianTranslations.com is not only a completely dynamic site, but it actually only contains one complete PHP file (index.php) and uses .htaccess to rewrite querystring such that they look like normal URLs and static pages with .html extensions.

[Chris]

It is fairly easy to change extensions using .htaccess to whatever you like, however no extension is best.

For extremely large dynamic sites you may end up making the pages actually static as well...

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/html-cache-php-database/

[Todd W]

It is fairly easy to change extensions using .htaccess to whatever you like, however no extension is best.

For extremely large dynamic sites you may end up making the pages actually static as well...

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/html-cache-php-database/

Even smaller sites that do stuff with maps really benefit from caching. I have one that uses google maps and is about 3000% faster if I cache isntead of generate each time. Note: This is ONTOP of cahcing the Long./Lat in a db!

My cache system is VERY similiar to the one you linked too, I think it's pretty standard php/static page caching module.

[KLB]

It is fairly easy to change extensions using .htaccess to whatever you like, however no extension is best.
Indeed. The main reason I use the .HTML extension is out of tradition and because it is what people are most accustom to.


For extremely large dynamic sites you may end up making the pages actually static as well...

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/html-cache-php-database/

One might also make pages that are not truly dynamic (in the database kind of way) but aren't truly static either. Many pages on my chemistry site are for all tense and purposes are static, but are dynamically pulled together by different include files that contain the various bits and pieces (menus, etc.).

[Cutter]

The difference between the two is very marginal, stay away from dynamic URLs and your doing just fine.

Relevent backlinks are going to be 9999x more important to your SEO

[andyf]

uses .htaccess to rewrite querystring such that they look like normal URLs and static pages with .html extensions.


why you do so, ( use .htaccess and rewrite ) that mean dynamic pages which use php and other don’t have .html extension,

you have to forcefully convert them using redirects for SE friendly.
IMO If you want to use some special code within html page you have to embed them within html.

[Chris]

say what?

[KLB]

why you do so, ( use .htaccess and rewrite ) that mean dynamic pages which use php and other don’t have .html extension,

you have to forcefully convert them using redirects for SE friendly.
IMO If you want to use some special code within html page you have to embed them within html.

This post makes absolutely no sense. Would you please try to rephrase it in a little clearer fashion so that we can understand the point you are trying to make?:confused:

[jono69]

Search engines crawl and index pages with many extension variations. I believe it is unimportant to remove .html for seo purposes. Like chris highlights it could be done for user preferences rather than seo.