Why is URL Structure Important for SEO?
April 10, 2013
Sarvesh Bagla
When you go to a good SEO company, you’re going to get different SEO plans which you can choose amongst. Whichever plan you end up opting for, ensure that it includes optimizing the URL structure because it can have a significant impact on the way your SEO activity is carried out.
1. Follow search-engine friendly naming conventions. Some people make the mistake of giving such names as ‘page # 1″ and ‘page # 2″ to their pages which is a huge no for search engine optimization, because it’s a lot easier for search engines to follow well structured URLs. As an example, if the URL is example.com/blog/news, the search engine robot will know that it has to index the home page of the website, the blog, and the news.
2. Include keywords in URL’s. You’re allowed to include your keyword in the URL. This is good for SEO and it brings in targeted Web traffic since people who click on it will be people who are interested in exactly what you are offering.
TinyURLs are very popular today. Even with the criticism that they render visitors blind, they are still beneficial for search engine optimization. This is because TinyURLs ‘301’² (permanently redirect) do not index the TinyURL, but rather they pass the PR (PageRank) and index to the actual URL. Do not ignore your URL structure just because you are using TinyURLs.
3. Develop well-structured URL’s. According to Google’s Matt Cutts, the Google algorithm pays attention to the first 3 to 5 words and less attention to any word thereafter. With a structured URL, you will avoid issues related to sub-domains, which are best avoided because they are often lengthy and complex. They may be important for online reputation management, but they lead to loss of trust and value.
A well-structured URL makes use of hyphens and underscores. The separation makes crawling by search engine robots easier and has the effect of increasing your ranking in search engine results pages. The best order for separating multiple words in a URL are hyphens, underscores, ( ), +, and nothing, in that order.
4. Stay away from numbers. You should use only words since numbers detract from efficient usability. Only use numbers if they help in explaining the website’s content. The URL structure should define the parent directories as well as the sub-directories clearly and completely. This means should the visitor remove part of the URL, he will be left with the main page of the upper level directory.
The best SEO agency and SEO Experts always uses optimized URL structure in their SEO practice because good URL structure ensures fewer errors with end users who can cram the URL for manual typing. However, typos are common when people manually enter URLs, which you can avoid by keeping the URL short. The length will needs to be short enough for people to copy and paste on to their browsers. The characters should be such that the users do not forget them when typing manually.
If you’re facing same issues in your website, just give us call at +91-11-43534779 or request a free quote now. We’ll be glad to help you out.