Last Updated on July 29, 2024 by Admin
One very important activity you must undertake is making your URL Search engine friendly. This is what makes your website easily found by search engines. URLs are not just web addresses; they are essential for SEO and user-friendliness of any site.
Everyone is in a fierce battle in the modern world, and every step matters. Your SEO work will be boosted with the right URLs, while the wrong ones will hinder your progress. They should be concise, to the point, and optimized with keywords to relay the content of your web pages both to the search engines and the users. Below is a quick guide outlining some important basics and tips regarding the SEO URL structure you should use on your website to rank higher on SERP.
What are SEO-friendly URLs?
SEO-friendly URLs refer to web addresses that have been optimized so that they are easy to comprehend for users and also help the search engine identify what the page is all about. They are generally concise, informative, and contain the keyword string.
Why are URLs Important for SEO?
You may perhaps be wondering if URLs are actually that important. And the answer to this question is yes! Here’s why:
- Improved User Experience: Clean and easy-to-understand SEO URLs are very beneficial for the overall reception of the website among users. When users find a URL well formatted in the search engine results or shared on social networks, they can instantly predict what’s waiting for them. This clarity can enhance the click-through rates and minimize the bounce rates, thus improving the site traffic.
- Better Search Engine Rankings: Search engines consider URLs one of the many signals that they use to comprehend and subsequently rank websites. The keyword in the URL can help the search engine understand what your page is about, possibly increasing its ranking for those terms.
- Valuable Link Building Asset: When people re-post content, the anchor text usually uses the URL to help get high-quality backlinks. An SEO-friendly URL may effectively act as a description; thus, people will use appropriate anchor text to link to your content.
11 Best Practices to Create SEO-Friendly URLs
With this background knowledge of SEO URLs, let’s proceed to how you can develop them. Here are 11 best practices to guide you:
- Include target keywords in URLs: It should also include the main keyword or phrase for which you want to optimize that web page. This helps both users and search engines quickly understand what the page is about.
For example, if you’re writing a guide about dog training, a good URL might be:
www.petblog.com/dog-training-guide
This URL directly states the content of the web page. But do not try to stuff keywords that are irrelevant or make no sense. The intent here is to be descriptive and to the point, not to jam more keywords into the description than are necessary or natural.
- Use hyphens to separate words: Employ hyphens (-) to divide words in your SEO URLs. This is advantageous because search engines consider hyphens spaces for your URLs’ sake. Do not use underscores (_) as they are not word separators for search engines.
- Good example: www.domain.com/best-smartphones-2023
- Bad example: www.domain.com/best_smartphones_2023 or www.domain.com/bestsmartphones2023
- Use lowercase letters in URLs: Make your URLs small letters throughout the webpage. Some servers might process different URLs as case-sensitive, while others may consider URLs in lower and upper cases as different pages. This could have implications resulting in the formation of duplicate content.
Example: www.domain.com/seo-tips is preferable to www.domain.com/SEO-Tips or www.domain.com/SEO-tips.
- Use short URLs: Shorter URLs are better for SEO. They are also shorter, thus making them easier to comprehend, retain, and forward to others. Ideally, the URLs to your blog should not be more than 60 characters.
Example: www.domain.com/seo-tips is better than www.domain.com/this-is-a-page-about-seo-tips-for-beginners. - Use static URLs: Static URLs are constant and do not change, while dynamic URLs are made up of parameters that may sometimes change with the user’s action. In most cases, static URLs are considered to be more SEO-friendly. They are less cluttered, more readable for users, and also preferred by search engines due to their easier indexability.
- Static URL: www.domain.com/mens-shoes/running
- Dynamic URL: www.domain.com/products.php?category=shoes&type=running&gender=men
- Watch out for your subdomains: Subfolders are more suitable for site organization than subdomains if you are concerned about SEO. Google sometimes recognizes subdomains as separate sites, decreasing the overall site’s power, while subfolders keep everything in one place.
- Subfolder: www.domain.com/blog
- Subdomain: blog.domain.com
- Limit folders in the URL structure: As much as possible, it is advised that the URL structure should not be very deep. This means not having subdirectories nested deeply. The lack of hierarchy in the structure of your site is an advantage because it is easy for the crawling algorithm to assist in the distribution of link equity.
- Good: www.domain.com/womens/dresses
- Avoid: www.domain.com/shop/womens/clothing/dresses/summer
- Make your content match your URLs: Make sure the page’s URL corresponds to the content it hosts. This is useful for the user so they know what to expect and what is necessary for the indexing bots to know your page’s topic. The first URL shows what page is being navigated, and the second URL does not give visitors any idea about what the page contains.
For a page about caring for indoor plants:
- Good: www.domain.com/indoor-plant-care
- Bad: www.domain.com/green-thumb-tips
- Use HTTPS: This tip isn’t directly about your SEO URL structures but is heavily related: Make sure you use secured HTTPS on your website. HTTPS is a safer version of HTTP, as it guarantees the safety of browsing through your website and the information entered by users. This tip is relevant to URL SEO because, after ‘www.’, the first thing seen in the address is ‘http’ or ‘https.’
This means users will know the moment they glance at the URL address whether the site is secure or not. And if they don’t see it’s secure, they will not click. The SEO advantage of HTTPS also has a direct impact on your Google rankings.
Google also prefers sites with HTTPS over those without it. HTTPS is essential for more than one reason.
- Try to use anchor text: Moving on to the bonus tip, let me explain how to work with URLs on a site. There are two ways to link to a specific URL: You can simply write out the full URL or use a hyperlink and place the URL within some anchor text.
- Good: Learn more about our dog grooming services.
- Not as good: Click here to learn about dog grooming.
- Focus on making URLs user-friendly: It is worth stressing that SEO URLs are one of the smallest factors impacting ranking; we are talking about a 0.03% top rating. However, their effectiveness is realized through how users are affected. Thus, making your URLs as friendly as possible would be wise so people will easily remember them.
It is better not to stuff your pages with long and complicated sets of symbols and figures in the SEO URLs. Ideally, the URLs you create should be short because they are easy to look at and memorize. You should also attempt to communicate what is on the page through URLs. So, on a page about how rockets work, a good URL would be something like this: It is short and brief and directly cuts the chase — making the users more inclined to click on it.
Conclusion
Incorporating SEO-friendly URLs is crucial to enhancing your website’s visibility and user experience. Some general tips for improving your site’s SEO include incorporating target keywords, using hyphens, keeping the URLs short, and using HTTPS.
We at AlgoSaga believe in enhancing your website for improved search engine ranking and usability with SEO services. Apply the following approaches to design SEO URLs that are user and search engine-friendly. Doing so will get you on the path to increased exposure and traffic for your website.