How Important Are SEO Friendly Permalinks

I recently just wrote my article comparing BlogEngine.Net To WordPress.  During the course of my research I came across a post on Steve Trefethen’s blog where he discussed the possibility of migrating from dasBlog to BlogEngine.Net.  I left Steve a comment stating that I would not even consider the possibility of EVER using dasBlog because its unconventional URL structure.  Steve replied to the tune that permalinks shouldn’t be a consideration in choosing a blogging platform.

Note: If you don’t know what permalinks (or permanent hyperlinks) are you should read up on using permalinks before reading the rest of this article.

I left a lengthy comment explaining the importance of using URLs that are  both user and search engine friendly. Then I decided I would share some of my professional knowledge on the subject with others .  This post should be especially helpful to developers that just don’t have time to keep with the latest search engine guidelines.  I also hope this entry will give you some insight to designing a site architecture that users and search engines can better take advantage of.

Does having keywords in my sites URL’s matter?

The short and quick answer is Yes, Yes, Yes!!!  Just how important it is for your Search Engine Ranking is up to debate.  Some claim that it does little to help your page rank better for a certain search key phrase.  Others will tell you that it does provide a little boost in the pages rank position, but not much

So then why then was my answer Yes, Yes, Yes!!!?  First of all, one commonality found in all search engine algorithms is ranking of pages based on the density of key phrases within that page’s content.  By density, I mean how many times a prhase appears within a certain text as well as how far that phrase is from other similar phrases( also called keyword proximity). 

Part of any successful SEO strategy is assuring the usage of proper keyword density with out overdoing it and having a page flagged as keyword spam.  When considering density, search engines not only consider the keywords they find in the text of your web page, but also consider other factors, such as keywords in the Page’s Title and Meta Description, keywords other pages linking to that page and the words contained within the pages url.  So perhaps keyword density is better defined as the measurement of the number of times a phrase occurs within  a web page’s CONTEXT  in addition to a its proximity to other similar phrases. Of course search engines consirder the prominence of a keyword as well.  Prominence can be measured byt the fact a keyword is it immediately visible when the page loads, and whether or not it is inside HTML tags that place emphasis on the use of a keyword.  Tags used to increase the prominence of a keyword include any HTML tag that help make the keywords stick out to site visitors, such as Heading tags or <strong>, <bold>, <i>, and the <em> tag.

One key ingredeint to a high having your pages rank well in search engines is to have the key phrases you would like to show up for in search engines, spread out evenly among various places you can put the keywords in a web pages context without over doing it. Again, by context I mean the text found in the page, alt and title tags for images and hyperlinks, the text of a web page, a pages title, in the meta description and keywords field, in a pages url, as well as the in the text and alt tags of hyperlinks used to link to a page.  Finding the perfect balance of the the proximity and density of key phrase distrubution is paramount to showing up well in search engines. If your a serious about your search engine visibility it is always best to hire a professional firm to do your Search Engine Optimization.  Certain mistakes can get your web site banned from search engines altogether and it can take years to undo such a mishap.

Are My Permalinks Important To Site Visitors?

When a user searches for a phrase in a search engine, they are presented with a list of results.  Contained within these results are the web pages that the search engine considers as the most relevant results for that search phrase entered.  The search engine will usually highlight the key phrases searched for in the list of results.  That highlighting of key words takes place in the title, description and the URL of the Web page. 

So exactly how does keyword highlighting of your URLs impact your search engine visibility? 

Consider this example.  A hypothetical user is trying to decide whether to use BlogEngine.Net or WordPress for their new blog.  To research the each bloggin application they search Google for BlogEngine Vs WordPress.  Now lets compare two of the results returned by google.

NOTE:  Click on each of the images to see the full size screen shot to get a better understanding material following the image images below:

BlogEngine Vs WordPress Google Search Result 1

BlogEngine Vs WordPress Google Search Result 1

Lets start our comparison based bearing in mind that nost search engine users simply skim over search results to identify which results they consider relevant enough to click.  The first sign that a result is relevelant is the fact that the phrase they searched for is Highlighted in the results title.  Comparing our two example results can see that the only the first result contains all the entire search phrase within the title. The second result on contains a partial match to the search phrase. 

Finding a partial match will usually provide the searcher enough incentive to continue scanning the results description for matches to their query.  In both examples we see that both descriptions are very relevant to their search query. 

Finally, a user will scan the URL checking to see if the search phrase is included in the URL.  The presence of the search phrase in the URL is usually a very good indicator that a particular page will have content relevant to what was searched for.  Furthermore, well written permalinks will give the searcher a good idea of the content they will find on the page.  This helps to promote a better click through rate from search engines to your web pages.

Now let’s consider the two URLs.  The in the first search result, the URL indicates that the page is really going to have the content that was searched for.  You can be 95% sure that this page has content that is relevant to the search phrase. 

Now lets look at the second URL.  Up until the point where the searcher reads the URL that result seemed promising enough to click.  But the user sees that flag an thinks “Hold Up!! Big flags here…  I don’t see my search phrase bolded in the results url.  And what are all those weird cryptic numbers? “  The searcher knows the url means the content on that page are going to be resuIt of some automated database query.  And from past experience the searched knows that most sites that use automated queries are nothing more than web spam. 

The searcher processed all of this information in less thatn a split second and moves on skimming the next result.  And our second result just lost a potential visitor becuase they didn’t mind their permalinks.  How may times have you just glanced at a full page search results page and clicked next within two seconds?  Know you know why. 

In addition to the bolding of the sites links, having “hackable URLs“ has become a well established convention.  Using well know convetions makes your visitors’ experiences more enjoyable.  Addiotionally, when your sites Permalinks are easier to remember and a visitor can often easily revisit a web page using their browsers history insteading of having to fumble through your sites less than super site navigation.

What the Importance from an SEO Perspective?

We already discussed the role keyword rich permalinks play in the search engines algorithm above.  But using good permalinks had more benefits than giving your page a little ranking boost. Badly designed URLs will not only deter visitors from coming to your site, but they can also keep the search engine spiders at bay.  Google has warned on several occasions about using Session Ids in URLs.  Anything that resembles a Session ID in a url, for example querystring that use GUIDs (Global Unique Identifiers), flag search engine spiders that crawling that page can cause the spider to end up in a spider trap. 

This flag isn’t just caused by GUIDs and Session Ids it also extends to all URLs that contain querystrings.  While most search engines will search spider pages that contain querystrings you are still indicating that your content is being pulled from a database.  To search engines the presense of a dynamic page, unlike with a static hard-coded page, means that the pages content will most likely change by the time the the search engine indexes the page and decides to display it in their search results.  That means there is a good probability that your pages dynamic content will no longer be relevant to a searcher by the time they see it in search results.

Again, just like Session Ids and GUIDs, querystrings should be avoided at all costs on pages that you want to show up well in search engines. Its not that using any the aforementioned will automatically preclude your page from being included in a search index, but it definitely puts the page and your entire web site at a disadvantage.  And if a spider does get caught in a trap, instead of indexing the important content, it will end up in a constant loop of retrieving the exact same content over and over, being served by different querystrings. 

What Impact Does Site Hierarchy Have On SEO?

Your site structure is everyting, really. The first task that my firm undertakes when developing any Web site for a client is defining the site structure.  It’s just that important.  Its the foundation for the entire Web site site. 

Categorizing similar information into the same directory will benefit your Web site from both a usability and SEO perspective. By using search engine friendly URLs, you can easily group similar content by date, publisher, keywords, tags, and categories.   Additionally, good URL categorization will make it easier for search engines to determine how relevant your site is to sites that link to it. 

By having a well defined site structure, you are communicating to search engines which conent you place the highest emphasis on.  By taking this into considereation, as well as the relevancy of the content located with each directory, you can directly effect on how important search engines consider pages with in each directory. Keep in mind however, most search engines are likely to assign similar ranking to pages contained within the same directory on a Web site.  Then within each directory, it will usually place the highest weight on the default document, or index page, if it one exists.

From this knowledge, we can then assume that a search engine will assign a higher weight to the pages within your Web sites root directory, by default.  However, other factors such as inbound links stop this from being an absolute rule.  Still, you can you can evenly distribute ranking to pages within other directories by having a good permalink structure in place.  Keep in mind that some search engines will consider every directory in your web site as it very own “Sub Web”, ranking all pages with that directory their independantly from pages in other directories.  For Example, Google uses a scoring system called Page Rank.  While Google’s Page rank is directly affected by the number and quality of links pointing to your web site, having a well defined site hierarchy is also key to distrubuting Google’s page rank evenly through out your site and each directory with in your site.

Having a good permalink structure has more benefits than just helping yourpages will rank well. By using the use of effecient URL rewriting to create your permalinks, you can be certain that you are using only URL for each post or page you add to your site. 

Having different URL’s pointing to the exact same content can result in your site being penalized and/or banned from search engines for duplicate content.  I know this may sound like a simple concept, but I often see pages that use several different querystrings or combinations of querystrings to retrieve the same exact content from a database. Thats also th problem with using a session id in a querystring for the purpose of tracking visitors on your site.  If you use such querystrings you need be especially careful that you mark the different URLs that dispaly no content with the nofollow attribute.  Again failure to do so can cause your site be penalized as spam and even removed and banned from search engines altogether.

Has this article helped you gain any new insight on the importance of search engine friendly permalinks?

Did I miss anything or is there something factually incorrect?  Let us know by posting a comment.