Simple SEO URL (OLD version) [support thread]

[DivaVocals]

... just yanking your chain Diva.

I knew that..

I just find it so sad that so many people believe URL re-writes are going to magically rank them better on the SE's. I attend a LOT of programming seminars in London and Capetown - particularly those that focus on SEO issues relating to code. Everyone I listen to (and chat to) advises developers steer well clear of URL re-writing. Over the last 18 months / 2 years the discussion has focused largely on the Semantic Web and the embedding of MicroData tags into the page HTML as this is where the future lies.

"Pages" will no longer be "ranked", and <meta headers> will become all but irrelevant. CONTENT within the page will be "benchmarked" and "rated" according to how well it meets the item defines (depending on which XMLNS protocol being used.)

And again.. you get no argument from me with regards to these modules having ZERO effect on SEO, and the fact that there are many who still beleive in this brand of SEO snakeoil... I still believe that there are other very valid business reasons to want nicer URLs, and for those shopowners who want to install a re-writer, I encourage them to install one of the two which are stable and supported.

Quite frankly I don't care if people use these "useless and risky" plugins - and if they compete with any of our clients' websites, then I actively encourage to install URL Re-writing, as the likelihood that they will break their site is quite high - meaning that we have fewer competitors to worry about!

You say that, but that you do seem to enthusiastically enjoy posting your "just say no to re-writers" message in the support threads of these modules.. From the outside, it sure looks like you do care on some level..

However to your last point which implies that one is MORE likely to break their site simple BECAUSE they installed once of these modules I will say this again.. Anyone can break ANY site with an INCORRECTLY installed module.. (the posts in the support threads for the most popular Zen Cart modules will bear this out..) To imply that ALL URL re-writer modules will break a site simply because it is installed is a tad misleading.. SSU is buggy, broken, unsupported, and IS likely to break one's site especially if one is running Zen Cart v1.3.9 or v1.5 not because it's URL re-writer, but because it's buggy broken, and unsupported. The others cannot be described in the same manner. Ceon URI or Ultimate SEO if installed correctly will not break one's site simply because it's there..