When you place an order online, you add the complete address of the place where you want it to be delivered. Be it your home or office; you share full information about the city, town, locality, house or office number as well as your or receiving authority's complete name so that your package does not get misplaced or delivered to someone else. By doing so, you have optimized your search address. The case is the same for web searches as you need to provide a complete address, so the search engine is aware of your web address and directs the traffic there. In the case of the web, optimizing the URL for the search engine serves the same purpose.
What is a URL?
A URL, Uniform Resource Locator, is the address of a webpage. The users can enter it to reach a specific page on the web, or the search engines can use it to direct the user towards the particular page in their query. It is like the fingerprint of the unique location of a page on some website.
What is SEO Friendly URL?
In the case of SEO, the URLs are not simply the address of a webpage. The SEO-friendly URLs are specifically designed or optimized to meet the requirement or satisfy the users' search intent. The URLs usually include to the point information and keyword, which helps the users reach the page without hassle, and increase its ranking in the search engines.
Why is it Important?
URL is important for SEO as it is a minor but crucial ranking factor. It falls in the category of technical SEO. The search engines determine the relevance of a webpage with a search query through the URL. In other words, the SEO optimized URL boosts the search visibility of the specific webpages.
Dig deeper into this article to learn and explore a beginners' guide about making SEO-friendly URL and optimization.
Top 9 Practices for Making SEO Friendly URLs
Optimizing your online presence, website, blog, ecommerce store is crucial to enjoy higher rankings in the search engine. URL optimization is also part and parcel of search engine optimization, which can play a critical role in improving the rankings. Therefore, you should not miss or ignore small opportunities of achieving better rankings in search engines.
Keep scrolling down to explore best SEO-friendly URL optimization practices and rule over the search engines.
1) Insert Keyword in URL
The basic, as well as an essential tip for optimizing your URL according to the search engine, is to insert the keyword for which you want it to rank. For example, if you want a webpage to rank for the keyword, 'URL optimization,' you must enter it in the URL. It will help the search engine know that the page is about that specific keyword, and it will direct the users with that search query to it.
2) Use Hyphens and Not Underscore in URLs
You cannot separate two and more words using spaces in the URL as there is no concept of space in it. Then how do you separate one word from another in the URL? By using underscores “_”? Well, that is a mistake you need to avoid essentially as underscores get hidden in the links. Instead, you can use hyphens “-” to separate the words clearly, while not compromising readability.
3) Keep URL Short and Simple
Keeping the URL simple and short is a basic on-page SEO element and practice. Simple and short URLs of all the pages of a website help Google crawl and classify them easily. The long URLs can confuse Google and lower the rankings of websites and webpage. Therefore, it is better to stay safe than experiment only to earn a loss.
4) Avoid the Use of Uppercases in URL
Another simple practice you can easily follow to optimize your URL according to search engines is avoiding the use of uppercase in it. At times, the search engines are insensitive to uppercases, while at other times, it can give the signal that it cannot find the specific page. It is better to stay on the safe side by sticking to lowercase in URL instead of using upper cases.
5) Avoid Adding Date in URL
The next step and practice to create SEO-friendly URLs or to optimize them is to avoid the use of dates in the URLs. Adding dates in the URLs make them unnecessarily long, which can negatively impact the ranking. Another issue with adding dates is that if you decide to update the content of a page having a date in the URL, updating the date too will give rise to other issues like losing the ranking of the page or redirecting the URL.
6) Organize categories and Subcategories Neatly
Another critical practice you can follow to optimize your URLs is to organize the categories and subcategories neatly. For example, you have a website with multiple pages. You need to create the website of each page following the main category and subcategory sequence. It will not only boost the navigation on site but also help Google to crawl them easily, which will ultimately impact the ranking. If you want to score high on SEO, organizing the URL neatly is the key.
7) Omit Stop Words from URL
One of the simplest practices to make your URL SEO friendly is to omit the stop words from it. Stop words are:
-
a
-
an
-
or
-
but
If you are entering the title of a webpage in the URL, you can do so by omitting the stop words. It will decrease the length and make the URL simpler while boosting readability.
8) Ensure Human Readability
Readability is the most important point while optimizing the URLs for SEO purposes. So, it critical to remove complexities from the URL and enter simple information or keywords that human beings can easily read and understand. When more users are able to read your URL, they will be more likely to click it, which will improve the ranking of your website or webpage.
9) Avoid Keyword Repetition
Lastly, another crucial practice you should never ignore to make your URL SEO friendly is to avoid the repetition of keywords in it. Your URL should never contain the same keyword twice, as it only increases its length without providing extra information, which can negatively impact its ranking.
Most website owners hire SEO experts to ensure SEO-friendly URL structure and achieve better rankings even when they do not know much about it.
Final Word!
A simple-seeming point like the URL of a website or webpage can impact its ranking in the search engines. So, if you want to achieve better ranking and creating SEO friendly URL structure is critical. If you are not aware of the technical details, contact search engine optimization company in Dubai to make your URLs and website perfect from the SEO perspective, and boost the overall ranking by paying attention to other details too. Avoid sticking to wrong practices to boost your visibility in the search engines.
