URL masking / rewriting on a PHP ecommerce site

[leb0wski]

I work for an ecommerce site built in a php environment. Currently, our URLs end in something like "browse.php?N=275520" where "275520" is a product category ID. I would like to do something where I could dynamically convert the "N=275520" to "N=runningshoes" or whatever the product category might be. This would make our URLs easier on the eyes, easier for customers to understand and we were thinking it might help with SEO as well. I'm looking for opinions on how much this would help our SEO and how to accomplish it. I know a lot of people talk about "link masking" and "link cloaking" in terms of affiliates doing evil black hat work...but that's not what we're trying to accomplish. We're not trying to trick anyone, we just want to make our URLs more clear and easy to understand for the customer and the bots...so maybe using the "masking" or "cloaking" terms aren't the right ones to use? Regardless, anyone have any experience with this kind of thing and want to share?

[beu]

IMO this is a good idea and not black hat. Be sure to redirect the old URLs via 301 redirect and be sure the "old" versions of your URLs aren't accessible to users and/or engines. You should be fine and this should improve rankings assuming the right keyword terms are used.

Anyone else have thoughts they would like to share?

[leb0wski]

Thanks for the reply beu. Anyone have any ideas on how best to accomplish this goal?

[beu]

Thanks for the reply beu. Anyone have any ideas on how best to accomplish this goal? Before doing anything you need to be sure your cart and/or other dependents will support such a change...