: SEO: adding an unecessary description key in dynamic url is it good or not? in the typical DB driven cms/ecommerce site you will have items pages at urls in some form similar to: http://www.domain.com/item.php?id=36

@Yeniel560

The unfortunate thing about the Google article you posted is that it's almost creating more myths than it quashes. It's true that search engines do not have any problems indexing dynamic URLs, but static-looking URLs still tend to rank better.

The main reason is that when you create static URLs they are less "watered down" with irrelevant characters and keywords. If you take this, for example:

products.php?id=123&descr=product-name&view=comments


Here you have php, id, descr and view as essentially irrelevant keywords to the page. It won't actively harm your ranking, but in some ways it's akin to calling your brown dog photo my-black-cat.jpg.

As others have said, clear and concise URLs are best for users and search engines alike. products/123/product-name/comments is much easier to grasp than the above. If it's possible to have unique "slugs" in the URL, remove the ID and go with a format like products/product-name/comments.

To answer your questions more directly:


Yes, that will improve SEO over just having the product ID. But it's still better for users to have a static-looking URL.
Either or both is fine. I believe Canonical and 301 act the same in terms of passing PageRank etc. Normally canonical is used due to technical restrictions, or as a plaster.
It depends on how and when you redirect. For example, if you only redirect when the descr parameter does not match the description for the product specified by id, you're missing the situation when someone goes to ?descr=cheap-blue-jeans&id=36. So it's always good to include it, in case you've missed a redirect.

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@Lee4591628

This is why I'd hate industry made solutions.

I do everything by hand (I have my own framework and so on, so, speed to deliver is not an issue for me), in order to make site more userfriendly.

See the evolution:

domain.tld?id=36&descr=cheap-blue-jeans http://domain.tld/product/36 domain.tld/product/36/cheap-blue-jeans http://domain.tld/product/cheap-blue-jeans


The last one, IMHO, is the most concise, friendly and relevant option. What need' to achieve that?


mod_rewrite, as other solutions.
create a database index on the short description field, so we can keep things fast
a simple routine to find products by description, instead by id.


A few extra work, a significant bit of friendlyness to users. Yes, because, numbers in urls does say nothing to users, nor search engines. Keep support to them as fallback may be an option, but using only descriptions makes more sense to me.

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@Shanna517

As always, putting users/usability first produces the best SEO results.


Creating descriptive URLs helps both users and search engines know what the page is about. So, yes, it's always better to use domain.tld/product/36/cheap-blue-jeans than domain.tld/product/36. If the descriptive URL is more useful to users & search engines then naturally that's what you want to be indexed and to be used as the canonical URL.
Better safe than sorry. Why would you risk creating duplicate content? There are no benefits to it, only harm. Would you create an unsecured backdoor to your website so long as it's not linked to from anywhere?

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@Becky754

If the dynamic URL is crawled somehow by the Search Engine then a description wouldn't hurt. After all, its about helping the search engine to index pages better, ain't it?

Besides who is more recognizable 1429 or marco demaio?

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