I have been looking at URLs a lot recently and trying to work out how much they really matter. The quality of URLs is one of many parts to the whole SEO debate that is difficult to negotiate because of so many different views on topic, all with different levels of authority. I have no authority at all really so am keen to investigate using sources that do.

Google’s own SEO starter guide (Pages 8-9 are most relevant to URLs), has some useful insight but doesn’t answer all the questions.

For example, it list 3 best practices for URLs…

• Use Words in URLs – sounds sensible, since words are easier to read than numbers. But how relevant do those words need to be?
• Create a Simple Directory Structure – This deserves a little more discussion, see below…
• Provide one version of a URL to reach a document – This also makes sense given the various rules around duplicate content

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ClickHeat is an interesting open source script that can be used to track users clicks on your website. I thought I would stick it on since it gives a slightly more detailed view than Google Analytics and would be interesting to compare to more costly products such as Omniture and its ClickMap feature.
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There is often only praise for Apple’s products. I have a MacBook Pro, an iPhone, a Time Capsule and an Airport Express (APX) and am mostly sold on their benefits over the alternatives. This is fine, since in all cases I have generally paid more than the alternatives and so expect a better experience, but when things do not work it is far more annoying.

The APX is designed to stream music from iTunes over a wireless or wired network to a stereo, thus avoiding the need for unnecessary wires coming out of the Mac. It just doesn’t seem to work though. Connecting to it is slow and in some cases impossible. Songs cut out or deteriorate in quality and often stop streaming in between songs.
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