Chris Pratt - Latest Comments in Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?http://chrisdpratt.disqus.com/enMon, 02 Mar 2009 07:44:45 -0000Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?http://www.chrisdpratt.com/2008/04/16/practice-seo-file-extension/#comment-6781344Nice article. Despite a lot of advice to the contrary, I have never seen any difference when adding file extensions.bcnMon, 02 Mar 2009 07:44:45 -0000Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?http://www.chrisdpratt.com/2008/04/16/practice-seo-file-extension/#comment-4969684This recently came up for me. Having been given about 30-40 static html pages by an "SEO" company and asked to turn these into a dynamic e-commerce site (using our existing platform) - from various conversations with them apparently having the .html extensions was in itself part of their "magic formula" for SEO.<br><br>So far I have written our platform to implement extensionless URLs. I think it looks nicer, for a start. I'd previously been led to believe it was better for SEO - but clearly concrete information on this is mixed in opinion.<br><br>More importantly, in the world of HTTP, we do not need file extension to infer the type of file we are downloading. That's the job of MIME. File extensions are very much tied to Windows and as such have no place in a cross-platform data interchange environment.<br><br>So whatever eventually turns out to prove marginally better for SEO, in terms of standards and professionalism I have to go extensionless. Google will typically follow where the standards lead; if the sites with the highest quality and most relevant content are all extensionless, then Google will adjust their algorithms to suit those sites better.<br><br>Whenever I have a difficult SEO decision to make, I always find the two biggest factors end up being Standards and Content. If you are doing everything right, SEO is no longer even something you have to intentionally think about.Pete HurstTue, 02 Sep 2008 11:38:50 -0000Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?http://www.chrisdpratt.com/2008/04/16/practice-seo-file-extension/#comment-4969683Just what I've been looking for, thanks!<br><br>I will use...<br>/%category%/%post_id%/%postname%.html<br><br>Instead of...<br>/%category%/%post_id%/%postname%/<br><br>All the small changes add up in google's eyes :)AbeTue, 26 Aug 2008 12:31:07 -0000