In my last blog post, I wrote about how URL’s need to reconfigured to be SEO-friendly, and I thought I would post a few examples of what I was referring to.
I currently work as a sports reporter for the Associated Press, and with the nature of the AP wire, my work gets circulated all over the web – in both SEO-friendly and non-SEO-friendly URL’s.
On Thursday night, I covered the Illinois women’s basketball game against No. 10 Ohio State, and afterwards, I came across a variety of URL structures for my story, both showing best and worst SEO practices.
For example, the Times-Standard (California) website featured the article with an “old dynamic” URL that is not what would be considered optimized for search engines: http://www.times-standard.com/ci_19933177. No categorization occurs in the URL, and the webpage is identified with a code “ci__19933177” instead of an actual title with keywords.
The Dayton Daily News (Ohio), on the other hand, hosted my article with a strong SEO URL that had categorization and a keyword-laden page identification: http://www.daytondailynews.com/dayton-sports/burke-lifts-illinois-women-over-no-10-ohio-state-1326349.html. Just by glancing at the URL, you (and most importantly, a search engine) will be able to quickly recognize that this is a story in the sports section that is about the Illinois-Ohio State women’s basketball game.
The irony though? The Times-Standard article was the first one to appear in the search engine results for “Illinois Ohio State Women Associated Press.” They must be doing something right in the other regards, very impressive.
Optimizing the News 
Jennifer Follis
February 12, 2012
I’m wondering if you’ll now examine what caused the Times-Standard to come up first?
Jay Lee
February 20, 2012
That sounds like a great follow-up post!