Universal Resource Locator as explained by the name is the address of your web page on the vast network of the internet. It is basically your first impression, it is the first thing that your visitor and Google would see. To make things easier, an URL is very much like a house address. The cleaner the address, the easier it is to locate. But interestingly, you can probably afford to lose a guest with the wrong house address. But in the digital market, you can’t lose a visitor. With the vast number of web pages coming in each niche, it has become even more difficult.
As a marketer, you need to understand that your viewer/audience comes online with an intent. Your job here comes in 2 steps: First being easily accessible and secondly having the right content at the address. There might be situations where you have written a great blog with all the right statistics, but low visitors. You need to understand that the visitor needs to reach the right destination to stick to your content. Your great content is waste if one finds it, right?
Hence making URL one of the major focus of search engine optimization or SEO. If you are someone looking for the right URL strategies to improve your SEO, you are at the right place. I have mentioned the 6 pointers for a SEO friendly URL: –
- Keep it simple – The average viewer today is very conscious of what he is getting into. He checks the URL before checking it out. It’s pretty simple though. Would you want to click on a website that looks suspicious with numbers in URL? It is advisable to have words that talk about your page instead of IDs or codes. A well-structured URL should be giving a brief about the destination page to both, the user and the search engine.
- Use your Keywords and don’t repeat them – This is pretty basic and predictable actually. Doesn’t it make more sense to use the words you are talking about on the page? You publish a content on your domain with a sole purpose, the purpose should be clear on the outside. This purpose will lead you to your keywords, the words that best describe your content. It should ideally be a part of the URL and just be there next to the root domain. This in turn will attract the right kind of visitors to your page.
Don’t repeat your keywords because Google won’t recognize them twice. And most importantly it looks tricky to the search engine and your visitors.
- Avoid long words and use the right separators – As I mentioned above, using the right words is important. But don’t be silly to include even the prepositions. Your URL should give an idea of your content and not be a mini content in itself. Words like it, the, at are distractors and will take up space in your URL.
You will make use of words while designing your URL. Now how do you plan to separate these words, because you can’t be giving spaces? The options here are either Hyphen or Underscores. But it is usually advisable to use a hyphen as underscores can be confusing. A prospective visitor might actually confuse underscore to be a space and not land on your page at all.
- Be case sensitive and careful about your stop words – URLs, in general, are case sensitive. This might be old news for you but your visitors might not be aware of it. Having a URL structured otherwise can actually redirect your visitors or cause 404 errors. Your visitors might actually forget the case you used, so why take the risk of losing them.
Stop words are the connectors between your main keywords. The search engine won’t give them value but would count them in the character limit. Try to avoid them unless they add some sense to your keywords and make it readable for your visitors.
- Try to replicate your Title – Consistency, matters! Not only in your content but also in its structure. Remember that your page title, URL and a brief description is all visible simultaneously to a visitor. Don’t you think it will look dicey if your title is talking about Vanilla and your description is talking about Artificial Intelligence? Always make it a point to include 2 or 3 keywords about your product/service in your URL. This will ensure that the URL matches the description and Page title.
- Build your URL structure keeping in mind your future needs – You will add categories and subcategories as your page grows with more content. Structure your URL keeping in mind the hierarchy so that your visitors don’t go through conflicting paths that all lead to similar web pages.
A clean and simple structure of your URL is what impresses your Visitor and the search engines. There can many factors that go into designing a SEO friendly URL. Some can be sheer common sense while some can be technical, but all are doable. It is a matter of time, you will learn how to effectively use these tips to your benefit.
You should be telling us your secret for designing a SEO friendly URL, in the comments section.
Guest article written by: Arkya Dey. Arkya executes and strategizes content marketing campaigns at PagePotato. An MBA by education and a designer by heart, he loves analyzing social media trends and likes to read/write on human behavior & managing workspaces. Apart from this, he makes Infographics and Explainer videos on his favorite subjects. He hits the gym daily & in his spare time, he helps upcoming movie makers with script writing.
Incorporate some keyword research and include the relevant terms. The Moz Keyword Explorer is great for this sort of predicament, as it groups keywords together to give an estimate of the search volume for particular topics.