Chris Pratt - Latest Comments in Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?

Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?

Anon — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 23:17:32 -0000

I feel having my link returned in the results with a .php ending is alienating to end users and would be better with just a directory style URL

Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?

Greg Percifield — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 10:11:59 -0000

There may not be a big difference. But certainly appearance is a factor. Directories look much nicer, and in the long run, will help you better organize your information as it branches out.

Suprisingly, the one comment I have not seen here is the about SiteLinks. Google will generate sitelinks that appear in their listings (assuming you receive enough traffic, and Google finds some relevancy in the directories.) This can give you several results linked to one Google listing (much the way using breadcrumbs with Google works).

I've seen benefit from both of those, and would therefore choose Directory type listings any time. The talk about link juice from how close it is to the root, and appearing to be a human-made page vs dynamic is outdated. Google knows what is going on, and you will have success or failure from either one regardless of those factors.

Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?

hk snyder — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:17:49 -0000

What about for an existing site that already has 1000s of inbound links to 1000s of pages that have the .html extensions? A change like this implemented at the time of a redesign will require 301 redirects for every page - right?

Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?

Bogdan Ciocoiu — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:06:31 -0000

Since Google launched Panda I'm starting to think that using .html can decrease your performance :-) I sued to think the total opposite.

Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?

Cheap iPods iPhones for Sale — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 05:34:51 -0000

Really great information.

Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?

SEOP.com — Wed, 26 May 2010 03:51:40 -0000

I actually have been wondering about the same thing. Though it's really hard to know, I still appreciate the insights you included here. Thanks.

Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?

robbykeller — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:47:11 -0000

The File Extension DMG file could be described as the Apple version of a .EXE (Exectuble File) and replaced Mac OS Xs .IMG format. As a disk image format the file maps a folder tree and its contents allowing the file to be virtually mounted on the computer as if it were a real drive. However the File Extension DMG format can be mounted as a drive irrespective of whether it is an image of an existing device or not, and is used to distribute Apple software. Repair File Extensions http://dmg.extension-file.com

Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?

Pete Hurst — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:38:50 -0000

This 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Best Practice SEO: File Extension or No?

Abe — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:31:07 -0000

Just what I've been looking for, thanks!

I will use...
/%category%/%post_id%/%postname%.html

Instead of...
/%category%/%post_id%/%postname%/

All the small changes add up in google's eyes :)