A lot of companies will be launching new initiatives in 2017.
Those initiatives may require a new website, or new additions to an existing website. If so, here are some things you
should consider when picking a new web address (URL) or when adding new pages to your website.
1. Keep things simple
This is Google’s number one most important advice – “a
site’s URL structure should be as simple as possible.”
For your main website URL that means it should be short,
memorable and as unambiguous as possible, especially if you’ll be sending
people to your URL from offline.
When it comes to the interior content pages of your website,
take the time to create simple, logical paths. Meaning, you’re URL should be www.example.com/SEO-for-beginners not www.example.com/pg1-28wgt7324=532dsafg25
2. Use hyphens
Google recommends the use of hyphens to break up words
instead of underscores. This helps to promote readability in your URL. (www.example.com/SEO-for-beginners)
3. Use all lower case
If your URL contains upper case letters, redirect to the lower
case version. In some cases identical URLs, where the sole difference is a
capital letter, can be considered different pages, which is not good for your search engine optimization (SEO).
4. It’s OK to shorten
headlines
Making your content URLs more concise and varied from the
content headline is actually good for SEO. For example, if your headline is “10
Super Quick Facts About SEO for Beginners” you can shorten your URL to:
10-quick-seo-tips-for-beginners
5. Keep keywords near
the front
It is still good SEO practice to try to keep a page’s
keywords near the front of a URL. It still needs to be readable and not stuffed with keywords.
6. The fewer folders
(slashes) the better
According to Moz, the more slashes your URL has, won’t
necessarily harm your performance, but it can create an illusion of depth and
make indexing your content more complex.
7. Use a single
domain when possible
Again, according to Moz, a company blog is far more likely
to perform well in the rankings and to help the rest of your site’s content
perform well if it’s all together on one domain.
How to Fix URL Problems
Here are Google’s recommendations for fixing
problematic URLs:
- Use a robots.txt file to block Googlebot’s access to certain
URLs. Such as dynamic URLs or URLs that generate search results.
- Avoid the use of session IDs in URLs. Use cookies instead.
- Shorten URLs by trimming unnecessary parameters.
- If your site has an infinite calendar, add a nofollow
attribute to links to dynamically created future calendar pages.
- Check your site for broken relative links.
The above tips were collected from various resources, including Google’s
own advice, Moz’s
guide and Search Engine
Watch.
At Sales & Marketing Technologies, we have been helping
businesses grow and thrive online for over 25 years. Our teams of skilled
designers, developers, and marketers can get your business where it needs to
go. If you’re ready to start enhancing your website or marketing efforts, contact us today.