Many of our clients have asked us whether their blogs and sites in general should have dynamic or static URLs. There seems to be a resistance to changing a site to static URLs unless there is solid SEO evidence that proves it is worth the developers’ time. We always like to highlight the user-friendliness of static URLs. It’s also valid to consider that user experience plays a very important role in SEO.
Dynamic URLs have dynamic or changing information that display according to specific queries. The page acts almost as a template and the dynamic part of the URL displays a string from the database that correlates with the content.
Static URLs, on the other hand, don’t change. They can be manually created or automatically generated based on the headline of the page.
An important SEO benefit of static URLs over dynamic URLs is that they give more prominence to your keywords. When created properly, they naturally show keywords to tell search crawlers and users what a page is about.
Of course, Google has repeatedly stated that it can crawl dynamic URLs. On Google’s webmaster blog, it has stated that “the decision to use database-driven websites does not imply a significant disadvantage in terms of indexing and ranking.” It also says: “Static URLs might have a slight advantage in terms of click through rates because users can easily read the URLs.”
It’s easy to see that static URLs are more user-friendly because they make it clear what a page is about. Static URLs are also more sharing-friendly because they are easier to copy and paste. Regardless of whether Google can crawl dynamic URLs, Google always works towards providing a better experience.
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