SEO URL - from URL Rewriting to URL Routing

With the current version (version 3), the software provides Search Engine Optimized URL in the form of URL Rewriting for links to forums and message, e.g.

• Original: file name with query string i.e. /tt.aspx?forumid=1
• Becomes: descriptive link, /Support-Forum-f1.aspx

And the above transformation works quite well for our current version users.
 

URL Transformation is More than just SE Optimization

However, URL transformation is not just about making URLs easier to index for Search Engines (and most search engines have no problem indexing URLs with query strings). Such transformation is also meant to make the URLs more understandable to humans. So, in the next version, we will be expanding the URL transformation to other areas of the forum, including:

1. New Selectable URL Styles for Forums and Topics:
   1. http://forum-URL/Forum/Forum-Title/{ID}/{page}
   2. http://forum-URL/Topic/Topic-Subject/{ID}/{page}
2. Common Message Lists (showing just a few below)
   
   1. Today's Posts: http://forum-URL/Today
   2. New Posts Since last visit: http://forum-URL/New
   3. Active Posts: http://forum-URL/Active
   4. ... and more (MyPosts / NoReply / Pending / Recycled ...)
3. User's Posts: http://forum-URL/FindPosts/{UserName}
4. User Profile: http://forum-URL/Profile/{UserName}
5. User's Own Public Profile: http://forum-URL/MyProfile
6. Permalink to Posts: http://forum-URL/FindPosts/{messageID}
7. Registration and Login page: http://forum-URL/(Register|Registration) & http://forum-URL/(Login|Signin)
8. And a lot more!

Our aim is to provide "hackable" URLs for users to find the pages they want without having to remember any file names or query strings. They will be able to simply type a easy-to-remember word and get to the pages they want quickly in the next version.
 

URL Routing v.s. URL Rewriting

There is one more thing we will address in the next version. In version 3, we use a third party dll called URLRewriter to transform the URLs for forums and topics, and it is not without its drawbacks. With URLRewriter, we must code all query strings into the link, potentially making the URL look non-descriptive, which defeats its original purpose (easy to guess, hackable).
 
In the next version, we make use of the ASP.NET 4.0 URL Routing engine that is part of the ASP.NET Framework, and with it we can code the essential info into a descriptive URL, while keeping optional stuff in query strings. For example, with URL Routing, we can do this:

• This is an URL to a topic: http://forum-URL/Topic/Topic-Subject/255
• This would be the threaded version of the same topic: http://forum-URL/Topic/Topic-Subject/255?tree=true
• This would be the printable version: http://forum-URL/Topic/Topic-Subject/255?print=true

As you can see, we are able to keep URL consistent for related pages (in the above example, pages essentially displaying the same topic), and varying them only by a very easy to remember query string.
 
Hope you find this article informative. In the next post, I will talk about various Usability Improvements you will see in the next version.

I am not sure if it is possible... it is actually not removing, but converting from one non ASCII character to an English equivalent.. do you have a conversion table I can look at?