Uniform Research locator (URL) represents the address of documents on your site.
URLs are very important because it is the first information you can give to Google and users, so, we can say it as a building block to an effective site.
According to experts, this is one of the important ranking factors for Google.
So, when you create your site URL, it is very important to make it right. There are many factors you need to consider before creating your site URL.
Search engine optimization is very important to consider when you create a website. It helps your content to get listed under the top search engine result.
There are many factors you need to consider while optimizing your website. According to a popular site backlink to your site, URL optimization comes under top 50 ranking factors.
There are many factors like URL length, keywords, URL path, and URL string that need to be optimized when we consider URL.
Importance of URL optimization:
There are many factors when it comes to URL optimization. SEO friendly URLs are considered as a significant ranking factor. They can help you to get many benefits for your SEO efforts.
- Readability: If you cannot produce a clear URL structure, then your bounce rate will be higher. It will reduce your website traffic and thereby site ranking
- Better UX: If you can design a better URL, it will help users and search engine to understand your page content easily.
- Ranking: Better URL structure is one of the ranking factors. You can include keywords into it to attract search engine and get more traffic.
- Links: URL serves as links when you share it on various platform. So, it will help you in building and thereby better site ranking
These are some important benefits you can get through optimization. So how can you make a good URL?
Factors to consider while making SEO URLs good:
- It should be easy to understand. So, make it simple and readable
- Include keywords in your URL to get a good ranking
- A good URL must include relevant anchor text which can make users easy to understand the content of URL.
- Include the main content and supplementary contents and make sure that you covered all related topics in your URL.
- You can thereby reach to right group and people can find your URL easily. This can help to increase your visibility.
- Apply all these optimization rules to each and every URL of your website. Consistency is very important.
SEO URLs Guidelines to follow while optimizing:
If you want to know how to optimize URL, here is a detailed guide that you can follow. This is a very simple process if you can follow them well.
Include Keywords:
When you create a URL, you can include one or two keywords in it to promote its reach.
You can use tools like Google keyword analyzer to find out keywords related to your topic.
When creating your URL, you can add popular user searching keywords to get it listed under the search result. But when you include keyword, try not to use the same keyword more than once.
Google won’t give any special consideration for repeating the same word more than once. Sometimes it may consider as a spammy link. This can also result in losing credibility among users and search engine.
So, while using keywords be careful to include them only as required. Overusing of keywords will result in penalty too.
It is advisable to include targeted keywords in the starting of a URL. Adding keywords related to your topic will also help users, to understand content without anchor text to it.
Use limited number keywords in your URL so that you can give a hint about your content to users when you share your URL anywhere without anchor text.
Minimize the number of folders:
Folders in URL means the name you see after slashes.
We can also refer to it as domains and subdomains. When you create a URL, there should be minimum folders which help users to understand the real content that the URL represents.
These slashes are the folders or the URL path where the contents stay.
For example:
example.com/whisky/15yr/special- edition/pedro-ximenez cask-750ml
This is a long URL when there are so many folders, you need to go through. You cannot understand what the topic is about from the URL. But consider this
example.com/whisky/special- edition /750ml
It is a very simple structure and easily understandable from the URL itself.
So, if you can limit the number of folders into one or two, you can create a more useful URL.
If you can create easy URL, users and search engine can easily interpret the content and this can improve your site ranking also.
Don’t use unnecessary characters and words
Sometimes you may need to include a proposition to connect words. But that doesn’t mean that you should have to include each and everyone on your URL.
Also, when you use special characters there are some you must avoid producing an effective URL.
Here are some important points to note while including words and characters:
Use hyphens only: When you need to fill the space between two words, you can either use a hyphen or else underscore.
Google always prefers hyphen not underscore. So, if you need to include punctuation, then use only hyphens
No Upper case: Always use lower case while making URLs. If you use any upper case, then it can sometimes lead to 404 error page. So, it is better to stick to lower case
Filler words: There are some important words you may need to use while creating your URL.
Some of them are a, an, or, but, etc, they are called stopper words. If it is not possible to avoid them, then you can include it.
Sometimes they act as the backbone of your URL. This is not a ranking factor or something.
Only use stopper words if it is unavoidable. Readability of your URL is very important. Sometimes you may need to use them to make complete sense.
Hashes: These are used to send to a specific section of a page. You can avoid using it in other conditions. Only use if required.
URL length: URL length is a very important factor when it comes to ranking. Everyone prefers short URLs now than long ones.
You can use a URL shortener to help you to reduce URL length.
After 512 Pixel, Google automatically shortens your URL length while displaying in the search result. Including 50-60 character is the advisable length of URL for your site.
Choosing proper TLD:
While choosing your domain name as your site address, make sure to get a proper top-level domain.
Do you know what a TLD means?
If your site URL is like www.example.com the .com part is called top-level domain.
Avoid using a domain like .biz, .pro, etc. They are a less popular domain, and no one prefers it.
It doesn’t have any connection with your site ranking but to get user’s trust, site ending with ‘.com’ is advisable.
Users trust is very important to get a bright future for your site and it also helps to, improve your SEO.
More than 124 million domain ends with .com. So, it is not a big thing but if you can consider it, this will help you in optimization and help you to get more trust from users too.
Online security:
Now hackers are out there who can attack any website they want. So, the security of a site is very important.
If you are using HTTP, then change it into HTTPS.
Users are smart now and they don’t want to take the risk by clicking on an unsafe URL. Without their support, you can’t achieve anything in this field.
So, it is better to get SSL certification for your site and protect it from vulnerabilities.
HTTPS means ‘HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure’ and it is the encrypted version of your site.
According to surveys, creating a secure encrypted site can increase your conversion rate and even improve the ranking of your website. Gaining user trust is very important to boost your site traffic also.
So, we can consider it as an SEO factor. SSL certificate is the only option where you can create a safe browser experience for your followers.
You can get it from various sites like NameCheap. Once after purchasing it, you need to activate it on your site and convert it into a secure one. This is not a complex procedure to do. You can see now, that most of the site comes with SSL certificate.
Use canonicalizing:
If you want to represent two URLs for a single content, canonicalization is the best choice.
You can use 304 redirectors or ‘rel-canonical’. There are different ways to represent the same URL. This is the best way so that you can concentrate the ranking into a single page other than splitting them within both duplicate contents.
So, this will help Google to identify duplicate of a particular page. Don’t let duplicate pages weaken the strength of ranking signals of the original content.
Match titles with URLs:
When you create a URL, you need to match it with your page title. It will help users to easily understand the content and they will click on it by knowing what is inside that particular URL.
This increases the chance of getting more clarity from the URL itself about the content.
For example, you can create a URL like example.com/ 7- best-movie-apps or else example.com/blog/7-best-movie-apps.
Both are fine, and users will understand what the content is about by seeing the URL itself.
Readability:
Readability of your URL is very important. You can’t just create a meaningless URL and expect everyone to click on it.
A well -structured URL help users and search engine to understand the content that it represents. We can check some example before going further
- example.com/dogs-love-rainbow
- example.com/pub/post ID? 77kw=dogs+ rainbow
- example.com/c678wl/i?HXID=iaj340530hqqua=f#lloadalley
Compare all 3 URL’s. When you see the first URL, you know what you can expect there. But the second URL is a bit more confusing but if you want, you can interpret it.
The third one is very complicated, and you cannot interpret what it should be from the URL.
Users may think that by clicking on the third one, their system may get infected. Everyone avoids such complicated URLs because of this.
It may have taken as a spammy link when someone sees so many numbers and characters. So, if you want to get a response from users, make your URL simple and clear.
Include XML map:
This is the final process you must do, when you want to optimize your website, XML map and HTML maps are different.
XML maps are created for search engine and HTML maps for human beings.
XML maps help the search engine crawlers to identify all your site contents and index them.
It will make the job of search engine easy and you can get under SERP easily by indexing your content.
You can create XML map with the help of various tools and this is considered as one of the most important SEO factors you need to do, for a good ranking.
Here you can only include the pages that you want a search engine to crawl and keep another safe.
Final words:
Optimization is very important when it comes to a website because every webmaster wants to get a good result out of their site.
When they handle both SEO and content creation the task becomes hard. But it is essential if you want to get a good ranking.
URLs are also important like your content. They are like the identity of your content. Optimizing them well can also help you to improve content reach.
Follow the above steps and you can see the positive result immediately. Check your Analytics after implementing this URL optimization. Create SEO friendly URL and evaluate your site performance.