March 07, 2008
Quinnipiac University Doesn’t Have A SEO Friendly Website
One of the the biggest ways to be recognized on the web is through search engines like Google. Search engines like words that they can use to better increase search reliability. A big factor in that search is the url that it grabs.
‘Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.’
I am going to use my alma mater as an example. Let’s say I was looking for the hours of the Lamson Library at Plymouth State University (PSU). What would make more sense as a url for those hours.
Quinnipiac University’s Library Hours – http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x956.xml or
Plymouth State University’s Library Hours – http://library.plymouth.edu/hours
Obviously PSU’s Library hours are more recognizable when you are looking in your browser history would you rather remember a number or a phrase that correlates to what you were looking for.
Let’s try athletics and Men’s Basketball
Quinnipiac University’s Men’s Basketball – http://www.quinnipiacbobcats.com/SportSelect.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=17500&KEY=&SPID=10471&SPSID=87999 or
Plymouth State University’s Men’s Basketball – http://www.plymouth.edu/athletic/winter/mbb
I mean PSU’s url is not what I would say the most SEO friendly, but it is a lot better than Quinnipiac’s. They don’t even have it under Quinnipiac’s domain which is a big lose your site ranking. The only thing I would change about PSU’s is the ending: http://www.plymouth.edu/athletic/winter/men/basketball.
If it was Quinnipiac’s plan all along to make their site not be SEO friendly, good for them, they did it. However all they would have to do is throw some apache rewrites into their configuration file and they could make their site much more search friendly.
