SEO Friendly URL's with IIS 7 URL Rewriter

 http://davidhayden.com/blog/dave/archive/2010/04/01/SEOFriendlyURLSIIS7URLRewriter.aspx

I have talked about search engine optimization ( SEO ) a lot lately with regards to a number of the new features in ASP.NET 4:

• SEO in ASP.NET 4 Websites - Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription
• Search Engine Optimization of ASP.NET 4 Websites Using Response.RedirectPermanent

as well as the IIS SEO Optimization Toolkit:

• Search Engine Optimization Toolkit for IIS 7 - Google Bing Yahoo
• IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit and Violations

In fact at the first Sarasota Web Developer Group meeting I presented how you can use the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit to analyze your websites for Search Engine Optimization Violations and other problems.

For those who are stuck with the ugly querystring-based URL's in their ASP.NET Websites, you will also want to take a peek at the IIS 7 URL Rewriter which can create more search engine friendly routes in your web applications.

By choosing a User-Friendly URL Rule in IIS 7:

 

 

One can literally create more search engine optimized URL's for your inbound and outbound URL's in your e-commerce website using the built-in URL's provided by the IIS 7 URL Rewriter:

 

 

One can transform a URL of:

http://www.MyEcommerceWebsite/product.aspx?category=iPads

to

http://www.MyEcommerceWebsite/category/ipads

in minutes.

Although not a silver bullet, the IIS 7 URL Rewriter is a nice way to move to more SEO friendly URL's and RESTful routing with very little effort.

 

David Hayden,