Specific URL rewrites not catered for by normal SEO URL plugin

Hi All,

We have an SEO URL plugin making our product pages nice and tight, but we have a specific question.

Where we have a subcategory, and then for argument's sake use a drop down to filter the results by brand, the resultant URL is basically gibberish, as this seemingly falls outside of the bounds of the URL rewrite plugin active on the site.

So, is it possible to rewrite this URL to make it cleaner? I guess i'm thinking htaccess rewrites, but that is out of our and our developer's scope of skills.

Cheers,

Pete

Is there any compelling reason you want to use URL rewrites?

These are no longer needed (for past 3 years or more) for "SEO" purposes, and there are some who feel that because the SE's now spider dynamic links very easily and efficiently, your rewritten URL's may be interpreted as duplicate content - thereby penalizing you on the SERPS.

So you may actually be doing something that gives you worse results in the SE's

If I were you, I'd get rid of the SEO URL add-on. It is no longer needed.

I hate to disagree, but i'm afraid you are completely wrong on the benefit of SEO friendly URLS. Our sales increased by over 4 times in one month once the new URLs were spidered. Your comments also fly in the face of Google's own advice, and I would trust them completely.

Thanks for the advice.

Pete

Google does advise to keep dynamic URLs as is for their purposes, as they can spider them more reliably than some "SEO" mods allow. Someone should have the link to Matt Cutts' blog post on the subject.
Human-friendly URLs are another matter entirely, and may be responsible for your results.

I have never (on over 100 sites built for clients) used these SEO mods (in over 6 years of webshop building).

My clients who focus on good content, relevance and securing meaningful references on other sites get excellent rankings.

I have one client who (in a very competitive arena) enjoys positions 1, 2, 4 and 9 on Google for a very critical keyword.

While many "SEO Experts" howl with rage (because their livelihoods are threatened, perhaps), the official word from Google is that URL re-writes are no longer necessary...

http://googlewebmastercentral.##########################/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html

Ok, this is not what I asked about guys. What works for us (number 1-5 on google for every product and brand) might not work for you. I really don't need an SEO lesson.

As a retailer, seeing how our SEO results change after implementing small incremental changes provides us with knowledge that others just do not have. We have a clear marker to determine if our SEO works - sales.

I asked about ht access editing. Apologies if this sounds brusque, but I would rather this stayed on topic.

Pete