From an SEO Standpoint, which is better for my product category URLs?

[fenderseo]

With our e-commerce store, we can customize the URL for the product categories, so we could have:

http://www.storename.com/product-category-keywords/

or

http://www.storename.com/product-category-keywords.html

From an SEO standpoint (or even from a "trying to get links" standpoint), which would be better to have? I feel like having a *.html category page would be easier for link building, but that's just my personal feelings.

Side Note: Our product pages are:

http://www.storename.com/product-name.html

Thanks in advance

[RyanKent]

Presenting your URLs without the technology ending (i.e. html) is definitely preferable for numerous reasons. This question is frequently asked and I really should write an article on this topic.

A couple examples as to why it is preferable:

• the .html offers no value to consumers and makes your URLs longer

• the .html lets the bad guys know what type of technology was used to create your pages

• the .html means that when you change your site to .php pages (a very common change) or any other technology, you will need to 301 your entire site which would lead to a loss of your link equity you worked so hard to build.