Best Practices With URL’s

The URL of your site is the very web presence itself, and as a basic building block is sometimes ignored or not given the attention that is deserves.

The structure of a Uniform Resource Locator does reflect in your SEO attempts, and care must be used in creating it.

The following tips give solid and informative information on how to best create and structure your URL.

Ensure The Structure Is Readable and Simple

Google’s number one piece of advice is that a site’s URL structure should be as simple as possible. Make it easy for people to read it and ensure it makes sense.

Avoid long, random coded patterns of letters and numbers. Nobody will ever click on that.

Make sure it has a clear meaning and does not confuse or mislead possible viewers. If you wish to separate words use a hyphen not underscores (_).

Always Use lower-case

Sometimes where a capital is used, some servers will consider them as different pages. Keep your URL uniformed in construction.

The URL Does Not Have To Match Your Headline Exactly

Your headline or keyword does not have to be the same as your URL, perhaps a more concise or simpler description is better for your URL. This way it is easier for the human eye to read and therefore more understandable.

It is important however, to make sure your keywords are near the front of the URL, but it still has to make sense and be readable.

Use A Single Domain or Subdomain

It has been researched that a company blog performs better in the rankings if it is gathered together in one sub and root domain.

There has been sufficient evidence to suggest if a company moves content from a subdomain to a subfolder, a positive boost in search traffic ensues.

According to the same research by Moz, the more slashes that your URL has can create an illusion of depth, making the indexing of your content more difficult

Avoid Multiple URL’s That Point To The Same Or Similar Content

Fussy and over complicated URL’s can cause problems for Googlebots. Google does provide information how this problem can occur including:

Dynamic generation of documents
Problematic parameters in the URL
Sorting parameters
Irrelevant parameters
Dynamically generated calendar
Additive filtering of a set of items

Fixing URL Problems

There are many ways to help sort out your URL’s problems and making it more efficient and perform better. Google once again list their own tips and advice how to do this:

Use a robots.txt file to block Goolebot’s access to certain URL’s. Such as dynamic URL’s or URL’s that generate search results.
Use cookies and not session IDs in URL’s.
Trim unnecessary parameters and shorten the URL.
Check site for any relative broken links.
If the site has an infinite calendar, add a no-follow attribute to links dynamically created for future calendar pages.

If you are uncertain of any of these tasks or remedies then contact Voova Digital immediately and we can support you with the correct advice and information.