tedd tedd-at-sperling.com |nyphp dev/internal group use| wrote:
Hi gang:
I got the idea of how to change things so that if the user types in a
url to a part of your site, then you can redirect the user to where
you want.
For example, long ago I had my site setup with folders and indexes.
For example, one folder was named "contact" with my contact page
residing inside named as index.php.
For SEO considerations I changed everything to root level. For
example, the "contact folder index page" combination was changed to
just contact.php.
However, that left legacy link problems where people/SE's/etc had
previously linked to my site using the old links.
To solve that problem, I simply used htaccess like so:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^contact$ contact.php
That meant that anyone who had a link to my previous contact, would be
redirected to my new contact.php. Everything is cool.
However, I liked the way the url looked before. I liked:
[1] http://sperling.com/contact
instead of the new:
[2] http://sperling.com/contact.php
How can I get the url displayed to look like number [1] regardless if
the user adds ".php" or not?
In other words, I know how to redirect the user to where I want, I
just don't know how to change the url the user see's -- how do you do
that?
Thanks,
tedd
Tedd,
You say you are motivated by "SEO" concerns. SEO is a dynamic field,
with "rules" changing frequently but more importantly the rules are
applied differently in different situations. Certain markets (certain
search keywords and phrases) are handled by search engines differently
than others. So when one thing seems "better for SEO" it might only be
better for that particular situation... not in general. Often the rules
follow competitiveness, with more competitive search markets getting the
most restrictions.
To my knowledge and in my experience is is not better to have /contact
than to have /contact/index.php. Google considers those two forms of URL
the same and has published that their algo is careful with /file and
/file.ext and /file/index.ext, so that they can be sure they have the
right "canonicalization" or root paths to the resource. They have a
strong desire to eliminate duplicate routes to the same data in the
search index because they don't want to index /contact as a resource,
and also an identical /contact/index.php as a second resource showing
the same content. .
And of course, thinking competitively, that is precisely why I think
it's best to have /contact/index.html. By presenting a clean,
no-monkey-business URL structure, you may avoid the extra scrutiny (and
all possible consequences of caution that may ensue if flags are
triggered). Of course I would and use important and relevant keywords in
the URL path, and usually I use a Front Controller and/or mod rewrite
solution to actually deliver the URLs and web pages. But I keep the URLs
as "standard" as possible.
It is commonly observed that if you leave duplicate paths to the same
resources, and Google doesn't properly detect it, you may suffer
filtering such that one path gets included and others get filtered out.
You may not exercise clean control over which one they keep, so if they
keep "A" and you have tons of quality incoming back links to"B" which
Google chose to filter out, you suffer. Certain very competitive SEOs
may notice that you have left a duplicate path to a popular resource in
place on your site, and link to it from a high page rank page in hope of
getting the "other way in" indexed and ranked ahead of the more popular
route. I'm not saying it works, but if you also have a mistake that
causes a blip in the indexing and inclusion of your site, it can work as
a competitive tactic to get your resource removed or demoted.
This idea of maintaining unique routes within your site is known as
"strict URLs" -- no two URLs go to the same exact content. When you use
a front controller, it becomes important (difficult?) to ensure strict
URLs because of the default behavior of Apache and all the possible
incoming URLs. So if you want to deploy a PHP front controller for
example, then plan your URL structure so that you properly redirect or
404 all routes except the one you intend to use as the strict URL to the
resource.
If you have a controller called "contact" and a method called
"contact_us" then your URL is /contact/contact_us/ but you need to be
sure that you also trap /contact/contact_us and 301 redirect it to
/contact/contact_us/ if apache doesn't do it (and Apache won't do it if
there is no actual folder in place on the web server). You also need to
make sure your controller is "strict" so it doesn't accept
/contact/whatever without throwing a 404 error (which apache wouldn't
have done, because it passed everything to the front controller as a
valid resource locator).
With frameworks, I think it's the same old rules applied to a new, more
complex yet elegant solution for web app development. Before it was
really hard to manage everything. Now we have some great tools (like
frameworks) for managing everything, but out of the box they seem to
default to the same old behaviors and so, need optimizing.
Of course your situation may be different than my experience.
-=john andrews
http://www.johnon.com/php-seo/
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