How do I create SEO-Friendly urls in ASP.Net-MVC - asp.net-mvc

Question

I'm getting myself acquainted with ASP.Net-MVC, and I was trying to accomplish some common tasks I've accomplished in the past with webforms and other functionality. On of the most common tasks I need to do is create SEO-friendly urls, which in the past has meant doing some url rewriting to build the querystring into the directory path.
for example:
www.somesite.com/productid/1234/widget
rather than:
www.somesite.com?productid=1234&name=widget
What method do I use to accomplish this in ASP.Net-MVC?
I've search around, and all I've found is this, which either I'm not understanding properly, or doesn't really answer my question:
SEO URLs with ASP.NET MVC

Answer 1

MVC stands for "Model View Controller" and while those concepts aren't what you're asking about, you generally can wire up URL's like you see above quite easily
So for example by default the URL's look like the following
http://www.somesite.com/controller/view/
where controller refers to the controller class within your project, and view refers to the page/method combination within the controller. So for example you could write the view to take in an input and look something like the following
http://www.somesite.com/widget/productid/1234/
Now as for SEO Friendly URL's, that's just useless sugar. You author your controller such that it adds harmless cruft to the end of the URL.
So for example, you'll notice that the following three ways to get to this question produce the same result:
How do I create SEO-Friendly urls in ASP.Net-MVC
How do I create SEO-Friendly urls in ASP.Net-MVC
How do I create SEO-Friendly urls in ASP.Net-MVC
Stack Overflow has authored their route values such that the bit that occurs after the question ID isn't really necessary to have.
So why have it there? To increase Google PageRank. Google PageRank relies on many things, the sum total of which are secret, but one of the things people have noticed is that, all other things being equal, descriptive text URL's rank higher. So that's why Stack Overflow uses that text after the question number.

Answer 2

Create a new route in the Global.asax to handle this:
routes.MapRoute(
"productId", // Route name
"productId/{id}/{name}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "productId", id = 1234, name = widget } // Parameter defaults
);
Asp.Net MVC has routing built in, so no need for the Url Rewriter.

Answer 3

Be careful when implementing routes with names in them, you need to validate that the name coming in is correct or you can end up harming your SEO-Ranking on the page by having multiple URIs share the same content, either set up a proper canonical or have your controller issue 301s when visiting the 'wrong' URI.
A quick writeup I did on the latter solution can be found at:
http://mynameiscoffey.com/2010/12/19/seo-friendly-urls-in-asp-net-mvc/
Some info on canonicals:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

Answer 4

I think what you are after is MVC Routing
have a look at these
MVC Routing on www.asp.net
Book: ASP.NET MVC in Action - Routing

Answer 5

It is also important to handle legacy urls. I have a database of old and new urls and I redirect with the following code;
public class AspxCatchHandler : IHttpHandler, IRequiresSessionState
{
#region IHttpHandler Members
public bool IsReusable
{
get { return true; }
}
public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
{
if (context.Request.Url.AbsolutePath.Contains("aspx") && !context.Request.Url.AbsolutePath.ToLower().Contains("default.aspx"))
{
string strurl = context.Request.Url.PathAndQuery.ToString();
string chrAction = "";
string chrDest = "";
try
{
DataTable dtRedirect = SqlFactory.Execute(
ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["emptum"].ConnectionString,
"spGetRedirectAction",
new SqlParameter[] {
new SqlParameter("#chrURL", strurl)
},
true);
chrAction = dtRedirect.Rows[0]["chrAction"].ToString();
chrDest = dtRedirect.Rows[0]["chrDest"].ToString();
chrDest = context.Request.Url.Host.ToString() + "/" + chrDest;
chrDest = "http://" + chrDest;
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(strurl))
context.Response.Redirect("~/");
}
catch
{
chrDest = "/";// context.Request.Url.Host.ToString();
}
context.Response.Clear();
context.Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
context.Response.AddHeader("Location", chrDest);
context.Response.End();
}
else
{
string originalPath = context.Request.Path;
HttpContext.Current.RewritePath("/", false);
IHttpHandler httpHandler = new MvcHttpHandler();
httpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext.Current);
HttpContext.Current.RewritePath(originalPath, false);
}
}
#endregion
}
hope this is useful

Answer 6

i think stackoverflow is best practice.
because when you remove a word at end of url, it redirect with 301 status to current url.
domain.com/product/{id}/{slug}
it had some benefits:
when you change slug of page it will redirect to correct url
your url is short but have seo friendly words at end.
in backend you use id to find product but you have slug for search engine
you can have same slug for different page. I now its not good for seo but you can have same slug for 2 products
the code will be like #Martin
routes.MapRoute(
name: "Cafes",
url: "cafe/{id}/{FriendlyUrl}",// how send array in metod get
defaults: new { controller = "cafe", action = "index", id = UrlParameter.Optional, FriendlyUrl = UrlParameter.Optional }//, id = UrlParameter.Optional
);
in action controller you should check database slug of product with the parameter that you receive. if they are not same redirect with status 301 to correct url.
the code for redirect:
return RedirectToActionPermanent("index", new
{
id = CafeParent.CafeID,
FriendlyUrl = CafeParent.CafeSlug.Trim()
});
RedirectToActionPermanent redirect with status 301. when you do this, the search engine find that this url is changed to what you redirected.