The Fuss Over Dynamic Versus Static URLs.
Google knows firsthand from all of their experience parsing the URLs of millions upon millions of pages, that in many cases, changing dynamic URLs to appear static causes problems. And so Google’s official stance is now to leave dynamic URLs alone. The post they have written is a “State of the URL Structure” without the vision for the future or any mention of the motives Google has for requesting we keep our hands off of dynamic URLs.
The motive is hidden in the language, and revealed through a Google employee in the comments stating “we would prefer to see a ‘messy’ dynamic URL instead of an incompletely [sic] or incorrectly implemented static-looking URL scheme.” Many webmasters are implementing URL redirects and URL rewrites incorrectly, it seems. Google is looking to improve URL structures, but not by telling us how to do them, just telling us not to structure them incorrectly.
Google’s Matt Cutts, in 2006, stated that not all search engines will read dynamic URLs; and further stated, “you definitely can use too many parameters. I would absolutely opt for 2 or 3 at the most…and try to avoid long numbers because we think those are session ids.” The importance of keyword rich URLs and page names is not lost upon the Google crowd, however. Within the recent post is this gem: “static URLs might have a slight advantage in terms of clickthrough rates because users can easily read the urls…”
The post that Google should have written would have better covered usability and information architecture. URLs that begin to describe the location and content of the page through plain English, utilizing keywords, have historically been indexed and ranked higher than their dynamic URL counterparts which are often riddled with multiple query attributes, parameters, and session IDs. This is why a big part of the SEO arsenal has been about creating keyword rich URLs. But besides the search optimization elements of not using parameters in URLs, the best URLs are memorable, easy to read and understand, and give users a sense of how deep they are within a site. Proper URL structure is an element of strong information architecture and web development with usability best practices integrated.
Creating those semantic URLs in dynamic, database-driven websites is completed through a variety of technical means. Some CMS’ have plugins to automatically convert the URLs, and others need a programmer and server administrator to integrate. It is important to note that automatic plugin conversions to static URLs may in fact be part of the problem if they leave unnecessary parameters in the URL, though. It is critical that any URL structure be evaluated by a professional.
What Google is saying, (contradictory to many SEO analyses and experiments) is that dynamic URLs can be indexed and rank as highly as static counterparts. However, once you get your top search engine rankings, people are more likely to click on your website if it does not have dynamic URL parameters. Ultimately, the lesson from Google is to do redirects and URL rewrites correctly, or not at all; the lesson is not to just leave messy dynamic URLs alone.
