Is hiding the file extension on pages of your website important?

[Employment Law Services]

Websites like people come in all shapes and sizes and are built using different methods.....html, php, htm, etc.

But when you go to some websites you can see the file extension in the address bar......eg. yourdomain.com/index or yourdomain.com/test.html

How many think hiding / tidying up the file extensions on web pages is important?

Does it offer and SEO related benefits?

Are you doing it on your website?

Would you like to but aren't sure how to do it?

 

[ScottJ]

Re: Is hiding the file extension on pages of your website importa

I don't see any seo benefit but as far as url structure go it's quite handy to use /directory/ rather than /directory/index.html due to the fact that a website redesigned down the line may require a change from html or asp to php and if you have been clever before on setup it won't affect your indexed url's & structure.

 

[stugster]

Re: Is hiding the file extension on pages of your website importa

I wouldn't have thought there would be any SEO benefit from hiding the extension. Google and other search engines aren't daft, and almost certainly wouldn't weight an .ASP site differently from a .PHP or .HTML.

It might be argued that by hiding the extension you're making your site more secure and less prone to attacks on known flaws, but that's very unlikely and very improbable.

 

[Ben Stege]

Re: Is hiding the file extension on pages of your website importa

You can't really hide file exensions, they are there after all, and crawlers will always find them (I think you are referring to creating directories). The overall structure and wording of the URL does however, try to describe the content well and keep the URL short. A properly worded URL such as /services/seo-optimisation.html is a lot better than /product164/832892/219021ab2.html
Again, don't worry too much about the file extensions.

For more info on URLs see Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

 

[stugster]

Re: Is hiding the file extension on pages of your website importa

You can use .htaccess rules to rewrite the filenames to remove them.

 

[Ben Stege]

Re: Is hiding the file extension on pages of your website importa

You're right stugster, didn't want to make it too technical;-) Not exactly best practice I would say anyway!

 

[stugster]

Re: Is hiding the file extension on pages of your website importa

Sorry, I think that post came across a bit snotty as well! It's a bit late.

 

[Ben Stege]

Re: Is hiding the file extension on pages of your website importa

Not to worry! Time to switch off now...

 

[adamski]

Re: Is hiding the file extension on pages of your website importa

I hide mine. No real reason I suppose I just think it looks nicer