Search Engine Friendly URLs (without mod_rewrite)

[eluser]FutureKing[/eluser]
I have shared windows hosting account. I don't have URL rewriting option.
I heard that keyword rich urls are good for SEO.
i.e. http://www.example.com/product/nokia-mobile-n72

But I can generate Urls like this:
http://www.example.com/index.php/product...mobile-n72
index.php is present in url because I don't have url rewriting option.

Will it be good or bad for SEO?

Now take a look on the following url
http://www.example.com/index.php/product...e-n72.html
I have added suffix .html in the last so that it can look like static page. But without url rewriting I have to include index.php in url.
Will it be good or bad for SEO?

I am building website with Code Igniter.

[eluser]Random dude[/eluser]
I'm no expert, but I think the .html extension has no SEO value. My personal preference is to have no file extension - it looks much better.
Also, /index.php/ is ugly, but if you can't use .htaccess, I don't think it will have any impact on SEO, as long as you make sure the url structure you use it (after /index.php/) is always consistant. Site.com/index.php/consistent/url/structure/all_the_time.

Have you seen CI URI Routing? http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-gui...uting.html. It's such a good think about CI.

[eluser]FutureKing[/eluser]
[quote author="Nicholas Reed" date="1263194145"]I'm no expert, but I think the .html extension has no SEO value. My personal preference is to have no file extension - it looks much better.
Also, /index.php/ is ugly, but if you can't use .htaccess, I don't think it will have any impact on SEO, as long as you make sure the url structure you use it (after /index.php/) is always consistant. Site.com/index.php/consistent/url/structure/all_the_time.

Have you seen CI URI Routing? http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-gui...uting.html. It's such a good think about CI.[/quote]
Ya! I know CI URI Routing.

[eluser]Sean Gates[/eluser]
The index.php makes no difference to Google, or any other bot. What is important is that it can parse the URL easily.

Which means:

- hyphens are better than underscores
- do not use spaces
- (as Nicholas said) use consistent naming

BTW, Google is now pushing your ranking more on how your content relates to OTHER sites that you link to, or sites that link to you, than by what EXACTLY you put in your title, description, and keywords tags. So, just make sure you're content is relevant to what you want to promote or sell.

-- Sean