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Special Characters and Numbers hurt your page listings

 

 

Remove any pages that have a special character, space or number in the URL name.

Earlier, we discussed the importance of never deleting an existing page because somewhere on the web, a link inside a forum, hard link or stored page will...  one day it will be retrieved. If you get a 'page not found' error, this is very detrimental to your web site.

Leave the (poorly named) URL in place, but update the content. However, it will be permanently marked as a poor page inside the engine database files because of it's URL name incompatibility.

A poorly named page looks like this root/folder/bad file name.html
Inside the browser, it would look like this domain/folder/bad%20file%20name.html

Also, if you are choosing a database program to create your web site pages, avoid $ID= filenames. If your database uses such file extensions, read how to make static pages with the information included or suggestions from their forum or their tech help.

Make a new page

If your site has lots of poorly named url's, make new pages with fresh content and save the page correctly.

Correctly Named URL's look like this:  mypage.html or my-page.html

Correctly Named Folders look like this: myfolder   or my-folder

Keep your URL names less than 30 characters. e.g. my-page-is-great-for-finding
(30 includes the - ) If your URL is longer than 30 characters, many email systems will reject the mail at the server or truncate the address rendering it useless. Also, if you are ever required to speak, tell someone the address, the difficulty soon becomes apparent.

Never start a folder with an underscore e.g. _foldername  UNLESS you do not want the search engines to follow the pages inside these folders. Some engines will not list any folder that starts with _

Keep your folder names less than 11 characters. This will keep your site clean and fast!

Notes:

If you name your folders with a keyword, add a dash between the words. If longer than 11 characters including the - , you may be perceived to be spamming and return a lower ranking.

Naming your folders.

Do not use Capitals or Spaces. Keep all folder names short and simple.

Use a keyword for your folder if relevant.

File Names and folders can

File Names and folders can contain both solidkeywordnames.html or solid-keyword-names.html with out much preference to increase keyword ratio.

Don't

Don't use any special characters such as *, !, ~ etc. The only valuable linking character your must use is a  -

Most search engines have indexing problems when your URL's contain special characters. The following special characters are known to be 'search-engine-spider-blockers'.

multiply (*)
exclamation (!)
tilda (~)
ampersand (&)
dollar sign ($)
equals sign (=)
percent sign (%)
question mark (?)
space ( ) will show as (20%)

Often, These characters are found in dynamically created Web Site Pages. They instruct the search engine spider-crawler that there may be an infinite loop of possibilities for that page. The Page will be skipped.

Reserved Characters

Many URL's generated by databases include components consisting of delimited and certain special characters. These characters are called 'Reserved', since their usage within the URL component is limited to their reserved purpose within the functions they output.

Reserved = ';' | '/' | '?' | ':' | '@' | '&' | '=' | '+' |
'$' | ','
Recent developments show that the $ symbol and others are being indexed. However, if you can avoid this form of page, it is recommended.
 

 

If your Ecommerce Store generates URL Addresses like these:


http :// www. samplesite. com/scgi-bin/store/store.cgi?cart_id=8673165.1660*tE6cw1&product=CHEAP20%SHOES

Your should build Html pages that use a form to generate the product on sale. This database store generation does not need to be removed. You should however, use a different page format for your online stores.

Search Engines do index deep level dynamically generated php and asp pages, but only for page discovery. Most follow the 'static links' inside your site. It is recommend that you avoid using dynamically generated links except in directories/folders that are not intended by you to be crawled/indexed.

Example categories.php is indexed,
products.php?cat=23 is indexed,
proddetail.php?prod=shoes-men-fashion&cat=23 may be indexed if appropriate static links point to the URL ID

Learn more Full Length URL Addresses
learn More Using 'quotes' for SEO

Tips:

Provide Static Links on your pages to any dynamically generated pages of your website that hold valid content.

 

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Summary

Never use a space between file names or folders.

Never overload keywords.

Never put special characters inside a folder or filename.

Anything that detracts from the filename you use should be avoided. There are many brilliant websites out there that fail just because the webmasters accidentally created a non friendly url.

When first creating a page (URL) name, make it sound enticing for the person to click and open.

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