How to make URLs better using SEO

SEO

SEO has many different aspects which are needed to be taken care of for getting the best results. Link building, content creation, using keywords etc. are well known SEO factors, but there is another factor which is a bit underrated as compared to the others and that is the URLs.

Yes, the structure of URLs also matter in SEO. Although people do not give much importance to the structure of the URLs  which they are using, but for a fact it must be noted that meaningful URLs play an important role in getting traffic. Creating effective URLs is an important task according to some best SEO firms all over the globe.

So, today we will learn about some SEO techniques to make  URLs better:

  1. Keep the structure simple and readable

This is the most important tip to follow while making the structure of your URL. If your URL will be simple and more informative it will attract more and more users. So, keep it simple like-

http://www.example.com/SEO-advice-for-beginners and not,

http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=4j3898enno0223bns983201djis03

Use actual words instead of numerals and symbols because it can be easily understood by anyone, especially when copied into some other documents or emails.

  1. Use hyphens to break up words in a URL

Break your URL into parts by using hyphens as  punctuations because it increases the readability. For example-

(www.example.com/SEO-advice-for-beginners) instead of underscores (_).

Use hyphen instead of underscore because it is recommended by Google.

  1. Use only lowercase in your URLs

Include only lowercase letters in your URL, because sometimes the only difference between two URLs is of alphabets. So, using both upper and lowercase might lead to duplicacy of URLs. For example- example.com/webpage versus example.com/webPage – can be considered different pages.

  1. Use of Stop-Words in URL

Initially it was used to say that Stop-Words(a, an, the etc.) are not used in URL but now it is not so, you can easily use the stop words in your URLs if it plays any role in improving the readability.

  1. Headline does not have to match the URL exactly

It is not like that you have to make your URL same as your headline in order to make it more informative and readable. In fact use few words of your headlines to make it concise.

  1. Place the keywords near the front of URL

Try and place your keywords in the front of the URL, but do not stuff your URL with the keywords you use in your text.

  1. Make use of single domain or subdomain

The Moz says that “a company blog is far more likely to perform well in the rankings and to help the rest of your site’s content perform well if it’s all together on one sub and root domain.”

It has been noted that whenever a company moves a its data from a subdomain to a subfolder, there is an increase in its traffic visibility.

  1. Do not use much slashes in your URL

However, use of more slashes in your YRL won’t do any harm but still it gives an illusion of depth and makes the indexing of your content more complex.

  1. Use verb stem in your URL

According to the guidelines given by Gov.uk- use should use the term “apply” rather than “applying” for instance.

  1. Don’t use high number of URLs which point to same kind of content

By using complex URLs with multiple parameters you can cause problems for the Googlebots, by creating too many URLs pointing to the same site.

A list is provided by Google which states the problems caused by using very complex URLs which points to the similar content:

  • Use of problematic parameters(like session ID).
  • Documents which are generated dynamically.
  • Sorting Parameters
  • Use of irrelevant Parameters
  • Dynamically Generated Calendar

These were some useful tips which you can use while making URLs for your site. In Fact, the best SEO firms follow it to make the best URLs.

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