Search engine friendly urls in ASP dot NET

Question

Objective was:

To change pages like details.aspx?GUID=903901823908129038 to clean ones like /adrian_seo

Achieved: Now using Response.AddHeader("Location", url);

I am able to remove all uppercase urls. I use the following function:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    string url = Request.Url.ToString();
    if (url != Request.Url.ToString().ToLower())
    {
        url = Request.Url.ToString().ToLower();
        Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
        Response.AddHeader("Location", url);
    }
}

Question is:

How do I change these to clean urls like /adrian_seo

I mean how do I handle requests coming to /adrian_seo and how do I show my old pages with new urls.

Do I need to use Global.asax?

Answer 1

Have a look into ASP.NET routing.

Answer 2

You could use http://urlrewriter.net/ which can be used on asp.net 1.1 ->

Answer 3

Use an HttpModule:

  public void Init(HttpApplication context)
  {
    context.BeginRequest += new EventHandler(context_BeginRequest);
  }

  void context_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
  {
    HttpContext context = ((HttpApplication)sender).Context;
    if (context.Request.RawUrl.ToLowerInvariant().Equals("YOURSEOURL"))
      context.RewritePath("YOURNONSEOURL");
  }

Note that you don't want to hard code all this. Find some sort of regex to match your need, like if the SEO url is: /page/234234/This-is-my-page-title, you grab the 234234 and rewrite the path to page.aspx?pageid=234234

UPDATE You can also use the IIS 7 Rewrite Module

Answer 4

I recommend using the UrlRewritingNet component. When writing your own library you need to overcome some difficulties, this library already handles that stuff for you...

It is a rewrite-module tuned for ASP.NET 2.0, and offers support for

• Themes and Masterpages
• Regular Expressions
• Good Postback-Urls
• Cookieless Sessions
• Runs in Shared-Hosting or Medium-Trust enviroments
• OutputCache is supported
• Redirects possible, even to other Domains

To enable extenionless urls in asp.net with IIS 6 or lower your also need to configure IIS to let asp.net handle all incoming requests.

Answer 5

After some Read up on Routing in Asp.net:

http://blog.eworldui.net/post/2008/04/ASPNET-MVC---Legacy-Url-Routing.aspx

Which brings both 301 redirects for SEO page rank and Asp.net Routing for permanent organic SEO solution.