SEO URLs with ASP.NET MVC

Question

Is there a definite DO and DONT when implementing seo urls? A lot of good practise seems fine for .html sites but breaks down on medium/large database sites.

AFAIK the url should be www.mysite.com/category/page-name-here

If I wish to make a content rich site and be default the category and page are database driven - does this prevent me from having pages such as www.mysite.com/about or www.mysite.com/home as the about and home pages could conflict.

Although the routing engine is flexible, is the above feasible and/or worthwhile?

-edit-

Just to elaborate on my question, is it possible to control the routing engine with a database?

It is good practice for the url to contain a meaningful description - eg stackoverflow.com/category/mvc and stackoverflow.com/questions/seo-urls-with-asp-net-mvc is good (as opposed to stackoverflow.com/category/9955 and stackoverflow.com/questions/734583)

As an expirment, I would like to take the control to another level, lets say that the two controllers above (category and questions), each showing dynamic data could be amended to be simply stackoverflow.com/mvc and stackoverflow.com/seo-urls-with-asp-net-mvc.

I would need to ensure that my database contained a table that tells me that the former is to be routed as a category and the latter as a questions - this could be achieved by a simple database lookup and would need to be implemented within Global.asax

My question is, can this be achieved and what would be the potential pitfalls.

Answer 1

It's easily feasible if you add the harcoded routes above the generic ones:

// AboutController.Index()
routes.MapRoute( 
    "About",
    "about",
    new { controller = "About", action = "Index" });

// HomeController.Index()
routes.MapRoute( 
    "Home",
    "home",
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" });

// ArticleController.Index(string category, string pagename)
routes.MapRoute( 
    "Article",
    "{category}/{pagename}",
    new { controller = "Article", action = "Index" });

They could all use the same controller if you wanted, but it might be a bit easier if they used separate ones.

The only problem you would have with this is if you had a category called "about" or "home" but this is unlikely I would imagine.

It should also be noted that you don't have to use ASP.NET MVC to use the routing capability.