CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.htaccessurlseourl-rewriting
Chris
Chris

Reputation: 1333

Add .html when rewriting URL in htaccess?

I'm in the process of rewriting all the URLs on my site that end with .php and/or have dynamic URLs so that they're static and more search engine friendly.

I'm trying to decide if I should rewrite file names as simple strings of words, or if I should add .html to the end of everything. For example, is it better to have a URL like 

www.example.com/view-profiles

or 

www.example.com/view-profiles.html

???

Does anyone know if the search engines favor doing it one way or another? I've looked all over Stack Overflow (and several other resources) but can't find an answer to this specific question.

Thanks!

Upvotes: 3

Views: 878

Answers (1)

Franz Enzenhofer
Franz Enzenhofer

Reputation: 3816

SEO optimized URLs should be according to this logic (listed in priority)

  1. unique (1 URL == 1 ressource)
  2. permanent (they do not change)
  3. manageable (1 logic per site section, no complicated exceptions)
  4. easily scaleable logic
  5. short
  6. with a targeted keyword phrase

based on this

  • www.example.com/view-profiles

would be the better choice.

said that:

google has something i call "dust crawling prevention" (see paper: "do not crawl in dust" from this google http://research.google.com/pubs/author6593.html) so if google discovers a URL it must decide if it is worth crawling that specific page.

as google gives URLs with an .html a "bonus" credit of trust "this is an HTML page i probably want to crawl it".

said that: if your site mostly consists out of HTML pages that have actual textual content , this "bonus" is not needed.

i personally only add the .html to HTML sitemap pages that consists only out of long lists and only if i have a few millions of it, as i have seen a slightly better crawlrate above these pages. for all other pages i strictly keep the Franzsche URL logic mentioned above.

br franz, austria, vienna

p.s.: please see https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/ for not programming related SEO questions

Upvotes: 3

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