When you’re creating a website, one of the most important things to keep in mind is how to make your URLs SEO friendly. This means that you want your webpages to have URLs that are both user and search engine friendly.
There are a few things you can do to make sure your URLs are as SEO friendly as possible.
1. Keep them short and sweet. The shorter the URL, the easier it is for both users and search engines to understand and remember.
2. Use keywords. Make sure the keywords you want to target are included in your URLs. This will help improve your website’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).
3. Use hyphens to separate words. This will help ensure that your URLs are readable and that search engines can index them properly.
4. Use descriptive titles. Your URLs should accurately reflect the title of the webpage they’re linking to. This will help users and search engines understand the content of the page.
There are two reasons for rewriting your URLs. The first is related to Search Engine Optimization.
Search Engines are much more at ease with URLs that do not contain long query strings.
Clean URLs, allow search engines to differentiate folder names and can also create real links to keywords.
Query strings appended to URLs are often considered hindrances when a search engine attempts to index.
Another reason to rewrite your sites URLs is to increase usability to your site’s end users and ease of maintenance for your webmaster.
Clean URLs are much easier to remember, rather than URLs that contain a bunch of parameters and characters.
The code of URL rewriting is actually setting a “system” on the host server that will allow it (i.e. the server) to know how to understand the new URL format.
When deciding to rewrite the URLs of your site, you will actually mask the dynamic URLs with static ones.
So you will be replacing URLs that contain query strings with elements such as “?”, “+”, “&”, “$”, “=”, or “%” will contain the more search engine friendly “/” (slash) element and present themselves in a basic form.
There are some free online/open source tools available to aid in this endeavor.
Free online URL rewriting - https://smallseotools.com/url-rewriting-tool/
Open Source URL Rewriter for .NET / IIS / ASP.NET - https://www.ocpsoft.org/rewrite/
URL Examples:
Dynamic URL: http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=3&view=basic (before rewriting)
Static URL: http://www.example.com/3/basic.html (after rewriting)
SEO - URL Structure
There are three major benefits of URLs:
- Enhanced user experience
A well-crafted URL gives a clear indication of what the destination page will be about.
Even if you hide the title, it will still be displayed in the breadcrumb.
This will help users to navigate to the right page. It will also help Google to crawl the page more easily.
As a result, it will rank the page more highly in search results.
- List of Ranking
URLs are important. They are a ranking factor. Keywords in the URL can also act as a ranking factor. There is more to a URL than just the keywords though.
When it comes to SEO, keywords are an important part of the equation.
While they are often used to direct users to a page, they do not have a significant impact on a page’s ability to rank.
- Resources
URLs can be copied and pasted as links on forums, blogs, social media networks, or other online venues.
Best Practices For SEO
- URLs are the most important part of the webpage. You should ensure that they are clear and concise. The best practice is to use words that people can understand. They can include ID numbers and codes, but it is best to use words.
- URLs should be short, but very descriptive. They should have a brief overview of what is on the page and what the user should expect.
- When writing a URL, hyphens should be used to separate words and spaces should not be used. URLs should not contain underscores, spaces or any other characters to separate words.
- Uppercase letters are problematic for a number of reasons.
If you are using a URL shortener such as bitly.com, you might use a link which is a combination of the URL and the text of the page.
In this case, you can use all lowercase letters, and this will be the same as moz.com/blog.
Another example would be a domain name which includes uppercase letters, such as the url moz.com/blog.
This can cause issues with duplicate content. If you use URL parameters, it can be a problem with SEO and duplicate content. Use them sparingly if you need to use them.
Conclusions
When it comes to making your URLs SEO friendly, there a few things you need to keep in mind. First, keep your URLs short and sweet.
This will help make them easier for search engines to crawl and index.
Additionally, make sure to use keyword-rich URLs that accurately reflect the content of your page.
This will help improve your site's search engine ranking and visibility.
Finally, use hyphens (-) to separate words in your URLs, as this will help improve their readability.
By following these simple tips, you can make sure your URLs are both user and search engine friendly.
