Thread

I’m curious.. without making modifications and removing index.php, how do the default URLs fare as far as SEO is concerned?

I know right now my structure looks like:
http://criticaldesigner.com/index.php/blog/comments/make_your_own_background_pattern_for_your_website/

I’m wondering.. removing the index.php is fairly easy and well documented here.. is there a reasonably easy way to hide the blog/comments piece so that the URL can look like:
http://criticaldesigner.com/make_your_own_background_pattern_for_your_website/

In my mind, it’s just easier for me to remember that way, and more familiar.

My concern is I don’t want to do anything that might wreak havoc on the system.. but don’t see the point in having the comments piece in the URL.. if necessary, i’ll just remove the index.php and rename blog to something else.

Anyone have any input? Please don’t go too deep on me PHP wise, as I’m more of an html/css guy and not very adept in PHP unless it’s simple cut and paste stuff.

The default URL’s are perfectly fine - don’t be fooled by SEO myths! Removing index.php is purely a personal choice, whether you leave it in or not makes no difference that I’ve ever seen.

If you’re running a blog it’s pretty straightforward to remove the “comments” template, you could run the comments page from your main index template, there are threads on the forums that talk about the “holy grail” of templates - ie one template for the whole site. For a basic blog site you shouldn’t run into too many issues but if you start building your site into a multi level, multi tiered content site then mutliple templates/template groups will stop you going grey 😊

Template are always a trade off between vanity (people friendly URL’s) and practicality (it’s you that’s got to build and maintain the site).

The Pages Module also allows you to do defined URLs. People often use it for more “static” pages (like about us or contact us) or for links used in marketing campaigns. Newism has written a blog article on their website regarding the use of Pages module for the Campaign Monitor website.

Keep in mind that you can use any name you want for your template groups and templates.

I believe Structure is also helpful in this regard, but I’ve not used it yet. People rave about that one, so it might be worth a look.

The default URL’s are perfectly fine - don’t be fooled by SEO myths! Removing index.php is purely a personal choice, whether you leave it in or not makes no difference that I’ve ever seen.

Totally ditto. My 2-cents:

Removing index.php from the URL string is cosmetic and nothing else. Search engines don’t care, and most of the SEO you’ll run into is hocus pocus mumbo jumbo designed to separate you from your money.

What’s important to Google, Yahoo! and others is quite basic: other high ranking sites with relevant content which link to your site’s relevant content. That may very well be 90-percent of the ‘real’ SEO game. After that, some keyword density which matches keywords to content to URL string can be beneficial.

Template are always a trade off between vanity (people friendly URL’s) and practicality (it’s you that’s got to build and maintain the site).

About the only ‘people friendly’ URL is one that gets used in advertising (television, radio, print) with something like:

http://www.mysite.com/promo

Obviously, that URL looks better on a TV commercial than:

http://www.mysite.com/index.php/marketing/july-promo-offer/

That’s easily handled with a redirect or the EE Pages module. There is no such thing as a ‘people friendly’ URL on a site because 99.99% of the time a user will simply point and click to get to a page, or copy and paste (what gets copied doesn’t matter much), rather than keystroke a link into a browser.

I’m wondering.. removing the index.php is fairly easy and well documented here…

It’s also a vanity thing. Fine, if you can pull it off, but neutral in terms of SEO.

is there a reasonably easy way to hide the blog/comments piece

I wouldn’t do that. Pick a group/template name that you find appropriate, and like, and stick with it. Removing the template group from your URLs is more hassle than it’s worth.

In my mind, it’s just easier for me to remember that way, and more familiar.

Remember? In this day and age, nobody needs to remember and types URLs manually (I hope!), apart from the domain name, perhaps.

I do agree with everything said in the above…
However, from an SEO perspective i will say…

1. Having the keywords in your URL is important
2. For fractional advantage, the nearer the beginning of the URL they are the better.

Now don’t get me wrong… There are other more influential factors, that are more easily changed and controlled. But… domain names with key words in do make SEO easier (only if your primary domain) and keywords and their position within the URL is an important factor.

That’s fine. Just pick the name of your template(group)s accordingly…

yes… 100% agreed…
Intelligent use of the “template group / template / article” is more than enough to satisfy my and most SEO needs. Sorry i was not suggesting that EE had it wrong, but that it is important to consider these things when using naming conventions within the template groups / templates.

Plus being able to drop the template group, by setting it as default. And by using modules such as the pages module, you have complete and multi-tiered URL control. Again more than enough to please any anal SEO!

Again more than enough to please any anal SEO!

I dunno. Some of those folks practice a religion that would make Monk look like a slob.

😉

is there a reasonably easy way to hide the blog/comments piece

I wouldn’t do that. Pick a group/template name that you find appropriate, and like, and stick with it. Removing the template group from your URLs is more hassle than it’s worth.

While this may be the case, I would be very interested in hearing the solution, especially for users who don’t have the Pages module.

There is no graceful solution. Removing the template group can only be done via .htaccess, and is definitely not recommended.

There is no graceful solution. Removing the template group can only be done via .htaccess, and is definitely not recommended.

Out of curiosity, why is it definitely not recommended?

There is no graceful solution. Removing the template group can only be done via .htaccess, and is definitely not recommended.

I understand that it would need to be done through .htaccess, and I appreciate that it’s definitely not recommended.  Regardless, can someone point to a solution, graceful or otherwise?

I don’t think vanity and SEO are the only reasons to remove the index.php from urls. 

It would be logical for someone to go directly to a webpage by entering a url, but what visitor would recall a web address like http://www.somesite.com/index.php/news ?  Most would remember http://www.somesite.com/news, and it seems that making redirects for every short url could get cumbersome. 

It would be nice to be able to remove it, but alas, I would also like to know the winning powerball numbers for tomorrow…LOL

But you can remove index.php. That isn’t what’s at issue in the thread. What some are wanting is to remove the template group as well. So, having http://www.somesite.com/some-news-article-title.