Rewriting URL's - Why & How

I haven't posted in awhile but have been working on the back end of the site to improve our services and functions. Rewriting all of the URL's was something that should have been done initially, but any rate it just got done recently.

At any rate, this is the skinny on why I feel it was important to do so so... why the url's are written as they are and how you can get it done regardless of your server.

The Benefits of Rewriting and Redirecting Your URL's

1. Avoids Canonical Issues: The same page accessed by different URL's
2. Visitor Friendly: Easily recognized, referenced, and "bookmarkable" URL's
3. Search Engine Friendly: Better indexing and improved relevancy
4. Visitor Tracking Improved: Logical URL's helps make sense out of your statistics

Canonicalization is the process of ensuring that all of your pages can be accessed by one URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Thousands, if not millions, of web sites have endured penalties and the lack of search engine results due to search engine spiders being able to access the same content via different url's.

Most web sites can be accessed with or without the www prefix to the url. The problem with this is that search engines see them as entirely different sites. Having the same pages accessible by different URL's leads search engines determining that it is duplicate content.

Beyond the duplicate content issues the different pages split the Google Page Rank ® intended for the one page. For example, if your site uses the index.html file for it's default page and it's not always referenced the same the Google Page Rank ® can be spit among the different versions: www.yoursite.com/index.html, www.yoursite.com, yoursite.com/index.html and yoursite.com.

With the forum it was essential because the same page could be accessed by any variation of url's depending upon where the visitor came from in the site. The different variables could be used in any order so to simplify it we took out the non-essential ones and made sure that they came in the same order.

If you're not using a data base to manage your site this would likely be your only issue with varying url's (making sure everything was accessed by www. only) . As our site is 100% managed through a data base it became more important. Rewriting the URL's allows us to remove all of the variables from the url's which speeds up indexing with search engines and makes them more logical for visitors.

For example... Captain Tommy Z's captains page with the rewrite it looks like this www.tampabaycharter.com/captain-tommy-z.asp as opposed to www.tampabaycharter.com/captain.asp?c_id=11. The url is easy for users to remember, link to, having no variables speeds up indexing and includes keywords in the url, making the page a bit more relevant for search engines.

How to rewrite and redirect your URL's

The process for rewriting and redirecting your url's is different based on your server platform. If you're on an Apache Server that is mod rewrite enabled (something your host can easily do if it's not), it can be as easy as adding a line or two to your .htaccess file in the root of your web site. That is if it's just to redirect all of your traffic to the www version and you're not using a data base to manage your site.

If you are on a Windows server that has a rewrite component installed you can do the same thing in those circumstances with a couple of lines to your httpd.ini file, again, at the root of your web site. If you are on a Windows server and need to have the component installed, I highly recommend ISAPI Rewrite from the folks at Helicon Tech. It's very straight forward and if you ever have difficulty in writing your rules they have a free support forum where you're sure to get timely and accurate help.

If your web site is on an Windows server and you do not have the program installed and they won't do it for you you'll have to do it through IIS (Internet Information Systems) on the server itself. If you're on a shared hosting plan it is something that you'll have to request that your host do for you as you won't have personal access to the server itself.

If you have specific questions about rewriting your url's, how it might matter to your site or what your rules should look like please feel free to post in the "Your Web Site" section of our forums. If you are less technically inclined and would like us to do it for you, we'd be happy and in many cases can be as cheap as $25.