No, not really. Leaving it like
"index.php?show=zzz&cat=yyy" would most likely be more SEO friendly. - It is easier for a computer to understand that
zzz is the value of
show, and that
yyy is the value of
cat when you use this basic format. - When you set them up side-by-side in a directory hierarchy - or even worse; as a single file name -, that becomes harder to determine. The key and the value become as two separate, equal-value values, when in fact they should be a key-value pair.
It is best to just set the URL up in a way that would be most easily understood by a human. In your case, assuming
show represents an action (e.g. "list" or "details") that is to be taken on a given
category, something like this may be a good idea:
- example.com/categories/zzz.php?category=yyy
That might turn into something like:
- example.com/categories/list.php?category=name-of-category
- example.com/categories/details.php?category=name-of-category
- example.com/categories/details.php?category-id=1234
There, from the point of view of an outsider, each of your
show parameters is a different PHP file, inside a "categories" directory, which takes a
cat (or
category) as a parameter. Pretty easy to understand both by a human visitor and by a bot.
P.S.
You should note that most of the SEO tricks that you see floating around are mostly bogus, or at least have very limited effectiveness.
A few common SEO tricks that people waste way to much time on:
- Pretty-URLs. (mod_rewrite)
In some cases this may have it's uses, but for the most part, use this to improve things for your human visitors, not the bots. - Meta description/keywords.
This was exploited so much in the past that it is hardly worth using today. You should of course include the description (Google might display it with the link in the search results), and adding a few keywords is fine, but don't think either will improve your SEO rating. - Keyword spamming.
This was also exploited. People crammed keywords all over the page to score high for them in the search results. - Today Google is more likely to penalize you for this. - You should of course include your keywords in your text, but write it for a human not for a bot. - Bold/strong text
Again, exploited in the past. Bold words are traditionally more important than others, and as such, weigh more on the search results. But overusing it will just hurt you. - Use it as it was intended: to emphasize words to human readers, not to bots. - Link-exchange
This *can* be helpful if used responsibly, but people are rarely responsible. - It is far more effective to write good content and "naturally" link to other pages with good content. They, in turn, may become aware of your site and link back to your content. - ... spamming
An obvious way to get black-listed; banned from even appearing in search results at all. - We sometimes see it on forums like these. People signing up solely to post links to their new site, promoting their new business site. - We promptly delete stuff like that and submit it to be black-listed. - Most forum systems do.
Don't get me wrong, some of these may have limited usefulness, but compared to good content, this is close to irrelevant. - The best way to get your site noticed is to have good content; content that people will want to read and link to. A single link to your content is worth more than all of these SEO tricks combined. - Spend more time creating good content; less time on SEO. Focus on your human visitors, not the bots.
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