3 site structure questions

[Alski]

Hi Guys,

Go easy on me: I'm kind of new to this technical stuff so be gentle.

1) I've heard lots of people talking about how absolute links are better for SEO than relative. Is this still the case, and why is it? (We've heard that search engines tend to automatically change relative to absolute anyway...)

2) If a website replaces 404 error pages with a link back to the homepage, is this bad for SEO (I'm dubious as to whether it would help conversion rather than frustrating, but on a purely technical level are there any pitfalls?)

3) Mod Rewrites. Does changing the usual "category.php=?id=43" to "keyword.php" effect the search engines - do they still see it as the old format, or do they see the new structure?

I might need to clarify that last question - it was explained to me by someone with more technical nuance than I a few hours ago, and I think it might have lost a little in translation!

Cheers guys.

[jimbeetle]

1) The SEs are all good at interpreting relative URLs, so no real SEO benefit between those and absolute. Absolute URLs do benefit though if your pages are being copied by scrapers; at least any internal links will remain.

2) Best practice is that a 404 error actually return a 404 status code and resolve to a custom 404 page with a bit of navigation help for the visitor.

3) Yeah, especially if a URL as more than one variable. You would want to be sure that something along the lines of...

category.php?ID=43&color=2

and...

category.php?color=2&ID=43

...both resolve to, say, 01234.php or keyword.php.

The use of the keyword in the URL can be effective, but I wouldn't go out of my way to force it.