importance of mod rewrite?

1BIZLIST · 18-09-06

Hi,

Just a quick question for the SEO experts, how important is it to use mod rewrite and if it is important why is it so?

The reason I ask is I see an awful lot of commercial sites that do not use it, and really just wanted to know if it was worth spending the time to rewrite every URL within my site to accomodate mod rewrite or not.

The next thing I would ask is, can some of you please give me some feedback on my first site that uses a product feed and is database driven. I have only been playing with mySQL and php for a few weeks, so I am quite pleased with it, but please feel free to pull it apart if you think it is way off the mark. I will only learn by experience.

I am aware that a couple of the links are dead though as I am still adding the content

Removed the URL sorry

Thanks
Mark.

limboInternet · 18-09-06

feels very empty, perhaps put 4 products per row as opposed to 3?

Things to add

Privacy Policy
A page about the site
perhaps a top and a bottom end to your menu bar so it doesnt just look like a table

Other than that its looking a good start

If you know a good flash designer, having the dogs trot along the top banner following the mouse positon would be a good gimic to impress the visitors. because I cant help but feel like that needs something extra, like how big it is it just looks like a picture, and perhaps could use the links within the picture? in the grass space either side of the dogs as buttons? (Ie those that are just below it)

drivetowin · 18-09-06

The site looks good

Personally I would make the product images clickable through to your product detail pages as well as having your 'details' button.

Also, you need to look at your price formatting as at the moment trailling zeroes are not showing - so instead of £1.10 it's saying £1.1

1BIZLIST · 18-09-06

Thank you for the comments / suggestions.

A couple of things:

Firstly would I need a privacy policy as I am not taking anyones details at this stage? Admittedly I was thinking of doing so later as the site builds and realise I would need one at that stage.

I will look at the idea of putting 4 products across the page, I actually designed the page wanting an uncluttered feel to it, however as stated this is my first dynamic site so still learning and there is still loads and loads to do

Thanks for the pricing problem Keith I took a look at it and it is actually in the feed like that, so I have used ereg to overcome the problem (hopefully - hate ereg it's a nightmare)

I have made the images link to the product page as well, nice idea thanks.

Mark.

trigger571 · 18-09-06

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1BIZLIST

Just a quick question for the SEO experts, how important is it to use mod rewrite and if it is important why is it so?

Hi MArk,

ModRewrite has another important issue to consider, apart from SEO. Lets take this link as an example ( http://www.designerdogshop.co.uk/pro...age=1&sect=all ).

Now imagine Google indexes this page and you rank number 1 or 2 in the SERPS. That would be a great result, but your listing will look something like this:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
New products for your pet Dog
New products for the designer dog in your life....Sponge Sports Balls Medium
http://www.designerdogshop.co.uk/pro...age=1&sect=all
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The URL above looks unattractive, and says nothing extra about your site. If you used ModRewite it could look like this:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
New products for your pet Dog
New products for the designer dog in your life....Sponge Sports Balls Medium
http://www.designerdogshop.co.uk/dog...ls/keyword.php
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this case even your URL is saying something relevant about the page you want you prospective client to click on. This might seem a small thing, but it does have a huge impact on people clicking on the ad. Even if you are in the top position, you might loose traffic to sites ranked lower, because they have a more descriptive URL.

The second consideration is ranking. While it is true, G, Y and MSN index dynamic URL's, you will most likely get better results using ModRewirt and include your keywords in the URL. Also, dont forget that the 3 majour engines are not the only ones around. There are thousands of minor search engines, and although they will contribute little traffic, dont allianate them as you might have potential clients there, and you never know, one of them might become the next Google!

Tom · 18-09-06

Good advice from trigger I completely agree

Also think as the site seems relatively small it would probably be worth it. I like it because it just looks neater if nothing else and descriptive URLs are always a good idea.

On the layout of the site, i'd be tempted to put in 4 columns too, looks pretty empty on my screen with just the 3.

Spartacus · 18-09-06

This mod rewrite malarkey is brand new to me. First time I heard of it was at the weekend on this site. I think it could be very useful on a project I’m currently working on. Can anybody suggest a good book on the subject?

I’m currently building a rental property search engine and intend to include a mini-site facility where a landlord has a page with just their properties on it, i.e. rentmygaff.com/larrylandlord. My plan was to add a folder for each landlord with an index file in it. The idea is they might promote their mini-site (perhaps through non-Internet mediums, such as the papershop window) and in doing so increase the exposure of my parent site. Seems mod rewrite could be a far better way of doing it.

Also I guess this mod rewrite is a manual process and you need to edit a config file or something each time you add a page, and you can't do it dynamically.

I was getting board with this project but suddenly I’m enthused at the chance of learning something new!

Sorry if this post is a bit off topic , and doesn't answer the original question.