Content Management Systems

The SEO Blog has a great article on the Top 10 Fatal URL Mistakes and includes this great list of tips for doing URLs right:

 My 10 URL design rules are quite simple:

1. Make the URLs clean
2. Make them simple
3. Make a URL human and machine readable
4. Use one URL per page
5. No special characters besides a minus/hyphen “-” ideally
6. Use slashes like real directories
7. Enhance URLs with numbers but don’t rely on them
8. Skip the date, it’s not the most important info
9. Do not ever change URLs once set
10. If you have to change URLs move them with a “301 permanently moved” redirect

I'm on a search engine optimization kick as of late and this article from SmileyCat web design blog hits one of the important subjects in Search Engine Land: The Meta Description.

Certainly, the <title> tag, as it forms the clickable link for a search engine result, is key to get right.

However, the snippet provides an opportunity to deliver a targeted call-to-action to the searcher that supports and builds on the text of the main link. It can also differentiate your result from those around it.

Not writing a good meta description — one that at least summarizes the content on the page — means that you're giving up free traffic from organic search engine rankings.

Read More About Meta Descriptions