Creating SEO-Friendly URLs

July 19, 2011 – 10:35 am

What is a URL? And more importantly, how do I create the most useful and beneficial URL for my website?

Actually, URLs that are well-designed have a strong impact on your SLC Search Engine Optimization efforts. When a URL is designed so that it is easily found by search engines, then it can also be more quickly indexed in their records. This helps to ensure that the pages of your site are indexed (or “seen”) by the search engines and this improves your rankings.

Creating search engine friendly URLs for websites are usually more easily done on static websites than on dynamic or e-commerce websites.

When creating SEO-Friendly URLs, remember the following tips:

Don’t:

-          Use dynamic URLs

-          Use very long URLs

-          Change your URL if your site is already doing well

-          Use numbers or confusing symbols. Stick with descriptive keywords.

Do:

• Keep it simple!
• Use static URLs (ones that don’t change)
• Use shorter URLs (no more than 3 to 5 words)
• Use descriptive keywords in the URL
• Use hyphens instead of underscores
• Use URLs that are meaningful to your audience
• Use fewer folders. Your structure should not be more than three or so folders deep. For instance, you have: http://websitename.com/About-Us/History

Google looks at your URLs. The longer the URL, the less weight Google will give to each keyword. Also, recent research has shown that short URLs (as per Google Search results) tend to receive more click-throughs than longer ones.

Using dynamic URLs may cause problems with duplicate content. When the search engine indexes a particular webpage and you get the same webpage named as a different URL, you can potentially be penalized with regards to duplicate content, even though the webpage does not actually change. Or, you may split your link value between the URLs that are used for that webpage. Static URLs remain the same and will give the search engine one specific URL for that particular webpage.

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