SEO Basics: Friendly URLs

Implementing SEO-friendly URLs turned out to be much easier than I expected - MVC routing already takes care of the "heavy lifting". The developer only needs to provide a function that returnes the "friendly urls" from strings (product names, blog titles etc.) and to update action links.

1. Routing. A new route needs to be added. It has to be added above the default route so that MVC framework attempted to match it first. The seofriendly parameter can be pretty much anything that will satisfy valid url requirements.

routes.MapRoute(
 name: \"SEOFriendly\",
 url: \"{controller}/{action}/{id}/{seofriendly}\",
 defaults: new { controller = \"Home\", action = \"Index\", id = UrlParameter.Optional, seofriendly = \"\" }
);

2. Creating friendly urls. Here is an example I found on the web and added it "as is".

public static string ToSeoUrl(this string url)
{
 // make the url lowercase
 string encodedUrl = (url ?? \"\").ToLower();

 // replace & with and
 encodedUrl = Regex.Replace(encodedUrl, @\"\&+\", \"and\");

 // remove characters
 encodedUrl = encodedUrl.Replace(\"'\", \"\");

 // remove invalid characters
 encodedUrl = Regex.Replace(encodedUrl, @\"[^a-z0-9]\", \"-\");

 // remove duplicates
 encodedUrl = Regex.Replace(encodedUrl, @\"-+\", \"-\");

 // trim leading & trailing characters
 encodedUrl = encodedUrl.Trim('-');

 return encodedUrl;
}  

3. Making use of the friendly url. Just adding an extra parameter to the object.

Before:

<div class=\"display-button\">@Html.ActionLink(\"Edit\", \"Edit\", new { id=item.PostID }) </div>
<div class=\"display-button\">@Html.ActionLink(\"Details\", \"Details\", new { id = item.PostID }) </div>
<div class=\"display-button\">@Html.ActionLink(\"Delete\", \"Delete\", new { id = item.PostID }) </div>

After:

<div class=\"display-button\">@Html.ActionLink(\"Edit\", \"Edit\", new { id=item.PostID, seofriendly = item.Title.ToSeoUrl() }) </div>
<div class=\"display-button\">@Html.ActionLink(\"Details\", \"Details\", new { id = item.PostID, seofriendly = item.Title.ToSeoUrl() }) </div>
<div class=\"display-button\">@Html.ActionLink(\"Delete\", \"Delete\", new { id = item.PostID, seofriendly = item.Title.ToSeoUrl() }) </div>

References:

SEO-Friendly URLs in ASP.Net MVC 3
How can I create a friendly URL in ASP.NET MVC?
by Evgeny. Also posted on my website