Should Webmasters Listen To Google About Dynamic and Static URLs?
Google has a blog post out today urging its users to ignore current SEO standards about dynamic URLs. In spite of Google’s ability to crawl dynamic URLs, it has been generally accepted sites owners should create static URLs in order to avoid duplicate content, maximize usability, and maximize keyword placement. Long URLs are more difficult to deal with and aren’t usually optimized with the keywords that will lead to better SEO results. So is Google full of it?
Far better and more thorough posts than I could ever write are available by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land, Adam DuVander at webmonkey, and randfish at SEOmoz, but I’ll briefly summarize some of the reaction I read about today.
Schwartz believes it’s best to go ahead with what Google says–at least from now on– and sheds some light on the question of whether or not to change URLs that have been made static back to their original dynamic form now that Google has said it’s preferable to go back. He stresses that if you do move them back, you should use a 301 redirect. But he questions if it’s a good move to mess with the long established link popularity of the old static URLs.
SEOmoz isn’t convinced that Google’s intentions are good for marketers, and suspects their urge to discourage webmasters from creating misleading URLs is the impetus behind the post. The SEO involved in creating static pages is more important than appeasing Google’s claim that static URLs can cause trouble.
DuVander echoes this sentiment by remarking that it appears Google is trying to talk webmasters into something because Google’s biggest overall concern is the creation of inaccurate and unreasonable static URLs.
This will be examined more closely in the upcoming weeks and months to see what effect this statement by Google has on SEO.
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