Because of the secretive nature of search scoring algorithms, it'll be hard to find a lot of hard science that is also current. Things change very quickly in the space, the best you can hope for are informed opines based on results. Those aren't going to be as rigorous as studies in academia, and since the described techniques actually work, they may not be freely available.
Author: Deano
Deano’s answer to: “Does having a web link like http://www.abc.com/index.php?p=page-name affect SEO?”
Simply put, yes.
Google (and other engines) will still index dynamic URLs as distinct pages. In fact, there is a great danger there: oftentimes, multiple variants of a given dynamic URL will exist, that resolve to the same content. This leads to the potential to have the appearance of "duplicate content" on your site, which can result, in the worst case, in lowered page ranking for the desired URL, in favor of some really ugly variant you hadn't intended.
In general, SEO is affected by multiple on-page and off-page factors, the primary among them being:
- Domain Age
- Keyword in Domain Name
- Keyword in URL
- Keyword in Page Title
- Keyword in Page Metadata Description Tag
- Keyword in Page Header Tag(s)
- Backlinks to Page
- Backlinks to Domain
- Backlinks from ".edu" and ".gov" domains
- Backlinks from popular internet directories (DMOZ, Yahoo!, etc)
- PageRank (for Google, though it's a good estimate of "juice" with other engines as well)
- Age in Google Cache/Days Since Last Crawl
Each one of these factors that is optimized for the targeted keyword or keyphrase helps, including a human-readable or natural-language URL.
That said, the reason why human readable matters is that such URLs generally look "static" to search engines, and confer a sense of hierarchy and organizational structure that a more dynamic/query string URL does not… And, of course, it's easier to remember why I bookmarked funnydog.site/dog/plus/bathtub/equals/funny, than, say, funnydog.site?funny=bthtub09.876#45&spampopup=yes… If I remember, I click. Not SEO in the purest sense, but great internet marketing practice, all the same.
Does having a web link like http://www.abc.com/index.php?p=page-name affect SEO?
Deano’s answer to: “What will the disappearance of the URL bar from Chrome and Firefox mean for SEO?”
Domain names are an important part of SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
People often forget that little fact.
Anyway, the reason domain names and URLs are important is their relation to the target keywords, and a given search engine's ability to relate the two, usually for the purpose of granting a higher ranking, or greater authority for the keyword.
When URL bars disappear, nothing will change about SEO. Humans, of course, may see your URL/domain name less, and occasionally have a harder time manually typing it in themselves. But one of the reasons URL bars are disappearing is due to the heavy reliance on social media and search engines to source clicks – for the most part, Joe and Jane Smith don't type in URLs, really, ever. They just google what they're looking for. And that's not going to change.
Long story short, don't worry about it. There are many other aspects of the changing nature of SEO, including ongoing search engine ranking algorithm changes, integration of social graphs on page authority, etc that should be causing you to pull your hair out… But the URL bar thing? Not so much.
What will the disappearance of the URL bar from Chrome and Firefox mean for SEO?
Deano’s answer to: “Do I need seo services if my site has page 1 ranking?”
A good SEO will tell you that you need SEO services until you are ranked #1. In general, a lot of what an SEO does may include a whole raft of other Internet marketing offerings. These would certainly still be useful to maintain ranking after hitting the first page of search results.
Deano’s answer to: “Who is a worse villain or better hero: Bradley Manning or Julian Assange?”
I'd say that Manning is a worse hero than Assange, because Assange's faults (which all heroes need to have) are primarily personal, while Manning's, however well-intentioned, are based on acts done to impress a hacker idol.
On the villain side of the equation, it's pretty clearly the opposite – Manning is not trying to use his power for evil… And in fact, there are many good side-effects (perhaps even intentional ones). So, Manning ALSO sucks as a villain. Assange, on the other hand, clearly is again driven in large part by personal factors – both his belief that he is right, and in his leveraging of his position for his own advantage, at times even sexually so.
Thus, I will say the following: Bradley Manning is both a worse hero and villain, while Assange succeeds 'admirably' at both.
This also explains why Manning is currently jailed and no longer a real part of the "news cycle" except as a discussion point on the treatment of prisoners generally – he just isn't that interesting a "bad guy", or conversely as a "martyr" to the cause of transparency.
Who is a worse villain or better hero: Bradley Manning or Julian Assange?
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