Tonight I am going to set up 'Search Engine Optimizted'(SEO) URLs on our website; indeed, www.buttgereit.com itself is set up to use them.

You can recognize them in that they don't look like:
http://www.website.com/index.php?id=23213&topic=cheese&another_var=somthing_else

SEO URLs are simple, human readable (mostly) URLs more like:

http://buttgereit.com/SEO-does-it-matter

Indeed, the first example is that of a dynamic page like many webstores use, but they don't have to be that way! So is the effort to set up SEO URLs worth the time? Why would you want to take the time?

Well, there is a school of thought that, as the name suggests Search Engine Optimized URLs are easier for search engines to work with. And if search engines like them, people believe more of your content gets indexed and the more likely potential customers are to find you when they search for related topics on Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc. But there is an equally vocal group that believe that SEO URLs are only so much balderdash worthy of disdain. So who's right?

Well, it is impossible to know for sure as most web search companies like Google do not publish the specifics of their search rankings and methods; but they do provide some hints.

Google says the following on the subject:

If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

Interesting, they say nothing about SEO URLs, but they do make a fairly strong statement about non-SEO URLs: keep the variables to a minimum and don't count on getting counted at all. Many of the other search engines don't even offer that much guidance. After all, the way they decide how to index is the 'secret sauce' of their business.

But that hint from Google seems to indicate that it does matter and other sites probably do have an easier time with SEO URLs. I can't prove it, but it does make sense. Normal dynamic URLs are not only more difficult for people to read, they are also more difficult to distingish for other computers that don't have the key to what all the variables mean. This being the case it would not be surprising if most search engines treat normal dynamic URLs in a conservative fashion. SEO URLs are simple and resemble static content; it's much easier to distingish two different pages from the same site than trying to guess what the variables mean to the page being index.

Perhaps even more importantly, these URLs are much more friendly to people and I think that does cause people to feel better, less intimidated by your site.. after all, wouldn't you prefer to shop a site where the URLs look more like:

http://store.com/electronics/tv/30-in-sony-plasma.html

rather than:

http://store.com/shop.asp?cat_id=32&sku_no=8763AHDN?

I think I would!

Cheers!
SCB