What is the best permalink structure for SEO?

[stevewiideman]

Your feedback here is definitely appreciated, but I'm also doing a public study and would be honored and humbled if you answered the 5 questions in my survey as well.

For those who do not wish to participate, I'd appreciate your general feedback on permalink structure best practices based on what Amazon.com and eBay.com have done to their URLs in recent times.

Thanks!

[bozzie311]

Just answered questions on your survey. I am liking this format these days for long term www.mysite.com/keword or www.mysite.com/keyword/ this makes it best for long term if you decide to switch platforms down the road. Looking back if we built links to all these pages /keyword/ vs keyword.php we wouldnt have to 301 everything in the future if it changes to .html or .htm etc.

[bemcapaz]

Also I read somewhere here in the forum that a www.mysite.com/keyword/ would be better than a www.mysite.com/keyword.html because it have less word, so, each one carry more value.

[stevewiideman]

Thanks @bozzie311 - it's amazing how things have changed over the last decade. Looks like a majority of respondents so far are still old school like me: http://screencast.com/t/ag4voDg561

[bozzie311]

yep and can make it more user friendly for remembering the url extension and sharing via social media, not to mention for PPC display url.

[bozzie311]

I think it really depends on the content. Does the user need to know what category or not? Or does the content need to be organized some way. ie. if you have a car site you can have a page /ferrari/ with all models on it with each model having its own url /ferrari/360-modena but for a toppic on that site "best ferrari service in NY" then you dont necessarily need /advice/best-ferrari-service-in-ny I think it just depends on the content and user friendliness.

[stevewiideman]

Fascinating. How do we explain eBay and Amazon URLs? Their breadcrumb system and categorization produce Google breadcrumbs and backward navigation, yet the URLs have absolutely no categories/directories.

[bozzie311]

That one is over my head