Clean URL structure -
The path refers to the exact location of a page, post or file. Not all websites use the same URL structure. The URL structure of a website depends on the unique needs of the website.
URL structures for a blog website might differ from an eCommerce or a membership site. Depending on the purpose of the website, the URL structures will vary, but no matter what structure is chosen, basic best practices still apply to maintain a proper URL structure.
URL structure matters for these main two reasons:. Great user experience is the most important factor when it comes to SEO. Improve your user experience by using a logical URL structure with page hierarchies.
Intuitively organized content makes your website easier to navigate for humans. You want to make your website as easy to browse as possible, so people can get around the site with confidence, not confusion.
In addition to structuring your URLs with logical organization, use SEO-friendly URLs. URLs that are simple, easy to read, and include keywords that describe the content on a web page are SEO-friendly. Simple URLs provide the best user experience. Optimize URLs with descriptive keywords that provide a clear understanding of what the page content is about.
URL structures tell Google what different pages of the website are about and how they relate to each other. Internal linking links to pages within your site helps with this too.
When you optimize your URLs for people you also make it easier for search engine bots to crawl and index your website to provide relevant content to searchers.
This means optimized URL structures promote Google PageRank PR. PageRank is the way Google measures the value of a web page and its relevance to a search query. SEO-friendly URLs increase the likelihood of the link being clicked and this can also increase your PageRank.
After your site goes live and anytime you do page URL edits, re submit your sitemap in Google Search Console. You want to submit your sitemap so search engines immediately crawl and index your pages to keep SERPS Search Engine Results Pages up-to-date with your site.
URL hierarchy is essential to figure out before you start building your website. And URLs can be different depending on the site's purpose. Make your URL structure intuitive so that users and search engines can quickly and easily understand the connections between different pages on your site.
HTTPS is the secure version of the HTTP protocol. HTTPS makes your website more credible because it instills trust in users—they feel more secure making a purchase with their credit card info.
If your site is only HTTP, you're probably losing potential business from tech-savvy users. HTTPS is also a Google ranking signal and prefers websites with SSL. In the Chrome browser, the padlock icon in the URL bar indicates if that website has a secure connection or not.
Click on the icon for more details about the connection. And if you do include it, it looks antiquated, takes longer to type and takes up more space in the address bar. Redirect the www version to the naked domain. When you publish a page on your site it should have a clear purpose.
This improves your user experience and can increase click-thru rates. Most URLs automatically use the page or post title as the default URL but sometimes the title can be an unnecessarily long string of characters for the URL.
The shorter URL the better—short URLs tend to rank higher too. Use keywords in your URL that are relevant and tell Google what the page should show up for in search results.
In addition to the URL, you also want to add these keywords into your page meta description because Google bolds these words in the search results and that makes your page stand out more.
URLs do not use spaces to separate words. SEO best practices use hyphens between words because this tells Google and users where the breaks between words are and they are so much easier to read than one all the words smashed together.
Stop words the, and, or, of, a, an, to, for, etc. do not need to be in your URL. Remove these words from your URL to make it shorter and more readable.
URLs are case sensitive for everything after the domain name. This means that DesignPowers. com will still take you to designpowers. com, but designpowers. Always use lowercase letters for your URLs and if you happened to use uppercase then update your links and redirect to the new ones.
Squarespace automatically defaults to use lowercase so if that is your website platform you have nothing to fret about when it comes to case-sensitivity. Redirects ensure there are no broken links for people and bots. However, avoid too many redirects because they can slow down your site. Removing postdates from the blog post URL keeps content relevant to searchers because people always want the most up-to-date content.
URLs without dates can improve click-thru-rates from search engines and help content rank for years. It also allows for evergreen content so you can go back and update high-performing posts with new content, then re-publish the post with a new date, without having to redirect the old URL.
Refreshing and republishing old content is a strong SEO strategy. Not including the postdate makes the URL easier to navigate for users. If your business name has a number in it and in the root domain, take precautions and also purchase the spelled-out version of the domain name.
Each character carries a specific meaning to web servers:. As the name suggests, it is not wise to use them in a URL, since they can be modified by gateways or used as delimiters in some cases:.
The excluded set is made up of all ASCII control characters, a space character, and the following group of characters:. These should be escaped, except for some which can have a special meaning in a specific context. They are most commonly found in HTML documents.
This type of URL is often a result of a search, product, or category page retrieved from a database. They are considered less search engine- and user-friendly, as they tend to contain unintelligible characters which make it difficult to understand the purpose of a specific page.
When a web page has a static URL, it means that its content is generally fixed. Static URLs contain mostly alphanumeric characters and usually include relevant keywords, thus indicating what the content of the page is about.
Static pages tend to get indexed faster, rank higher, and enjoy a greater CTR. Just think about it, which of the two would you prefer:. In August , Google officially announced that transferring a website from HTTP to HTTPS protocol would produce ranking benefits.
They are both hypertext transfer protocols, right? True, but as search engines are working in an effort to improve user experience, it was decided to add an additional line of security HTTPS. While HTTPS and SSL have been used interchangeably, they are not the same thing. SSL represents the standard security technology that establishes an encrypted link between a browser and a web server.
HTTPS is a secure protocol because it utilizes this technology. However, it is no longer just another ranking signal. Image source: EFF. A status code can be referred to as an online conversation between the server and a browser. The information they send to one another revolves around the status of the request.
To put it simply, the discussion is largely based on whether everything is OK or not. There are several classes of status codes, but for now, we are going to focus on status codes that are crucial for SEO experts. This status code refers to a permanent redirect to a different URL.
A redirect means that everything, from users and bots to link equity will be passed on. Nevertheless, note that not all redirects are treated equally, and still remains the preferred method. Status code is a temporary redirect and is, for instance, highly beneficial for eCommerce websites that wish to indicate an ongoing sale or discount offer.
The error means that the page cannot be found by the server. Practices for handling errors are different — some decided to use redirects and navigate users to the most relevant page, while others leave them. From an SEO perspective, canonical tags are similar to redirects. Both indicate that multiple pages should be considered as the same page.
The reason you may opt for canonical instead of a redirect is if you have an old branding element you want your users to see, but when it comes to search engines you want to indicate that out of the two pages, you would prefer the new one to be ranked. The information provided in this article has been collected from years of experience working with websites, and URLs specifically — helping our users make the most of their websites.
Ruben is an experienced content marketing and SEO professional whose content generates more than 15K monthly views. With 20 of his articles obtaining a top 5 ranking on Google, his expertise shine in SEO-relevant content. Outside of work, he enjoys reading, listening to podcasts, and open-water swimming.
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Backlink Monitoring Backlink Monitoring. SEO Crawler SEO Crawler. Bulk Reporting Bulk Reporting. API API. Free Tools Free Tools. Login Premium - Free Trial. How to Create Properly Optimized URLs for SEO 4 Jul Ruben Rogers in SEO Concepts. Contents What is a URL?
Do URLs have an Impact on Search Engine Rankings? How to Create Properly Optimized URLs for SEO Importance of a Clean URL Structure Elements of the URL Structure Characters Used for Structuring URLs URL Categories — Absolute and Relative URLs URL Types HTTPS vs HTTP Status Codes Canonical Tags Conclusion.
What is a URL? URL vs. Links Before we go much further, we should distinguish the difference between a URL and a link.
Now, imagine the following two URLs: www. URLs Tell Users What a Page is About According to Moz , URLs are a minor ranking factor.
How to Create Properly Optimized URLs for SEO A good URL structure allows users and search engines to connect the dots of your website logically and crawl the pages more easily.
Simplicity will be appreciated both by users and search engines. First, create the most important categories, and then move on to subcategorizing in the way it seems most logical based on your website content.
Keep the number of categories as low as possible. This, of course, does not apply to large eCommerce websites that sell a variety of items, but even they have to be organized logically into separate categories. An average business or personal website should keep the number of categories somewhere between 2 and 7.
Create a shallow navigation structure. What this means is that none of your pages should be buried deep into the structure but should be easily accessed in no more than 2 or 3 logical clicks. Sitelinks Sitelinks are direct links to your sub-pages, shown in a Google search result.
Internal Linking Internal links will help establish the hierarchy of the website, spread link juice and enable users to navigate the website with ease. Keyword Mapping This is an entire science of its own, but generally, you would want to optimize your pages, and subsequently their URLs to reflect keywords you want to rank for.
There are three rules to live by when adding keywords to create properly optimized URLs: Match the URL with the title of the page. This matters, because most users simply glance at a URL to make assumptions regarding the content of the page.
Target 1 or 2 keywords per URL. In that case, you should be able to dedicate no more than two keywords that would describe what the page is about and would be included in the URL. Anything more than that could cause confusion with search engines, which will in return affect your rankings for relevant queries.
Use of Characters In order for a URL to be properly optimized, readable, and easy to understand, you have to make a strategic choice of characters.
Take a look at the three URLs — which one do you trust the most? Here are a few other guidelines: Use alphanumeric characters where possible. Skip punctuation and other unsafe characters. Certain characters are difficult to read and can make URL comprehension impossible.
Check out the complete list on Perishable Press. Use only lowercase characters. Stop words are not necessary. Stop words are the most common words in a language, and search engines are programmed to ignore them. As such, they can be excluded from URLs.
Use hyphens and not underscores. To put it simply — hyphens help improve your SEO score. URL Length Google advises its users to keep their URLs as simple and as intelligible to humans as possible.
Redirects and Canonicalization Having duplicate content on your site can create problems with search engines. Secure URL Structure Although the primary purpose of SSL was to secure user data, this has since become a ranking signal, and as Chrome is about to label all non-HTTPS sites as not secure, it will help build trust with users.
Importance of a Clean URL Structure Creating properly optimized URLs for SEO entails writing clean URL structures. Simply, a clean URL structure is one that follows these guidelines: Is easy to read. see below Is related to the on-page content and can be used to determine what the content is about.
Only uses lowercase characters. Each URL consists of mandatory and optional parts: Mandatory URL Parts Protocol This is the first part of a URL that indicates the protocol a web browser has to use, and it represents a defined method for transferring or exchanging data via a computer network.
Subdomain A subdomain is a subset of a larger domain. Path to file In the past, a path indicated a physical file location on the Web Server. TLD A TLD, or a domain extension, follows the last dot. in a domain name. net — Similar to. com, this TLD is available for everyone.
Initially, it was reserved for networks and internet service providers, but now it is a great. com alternative, especially for application- and tech-based companies, since many users associate it with technology. org — At first this TLD was used by non-profit organizations, but today it is a popular TLD for many non-governmental organizations, politicians, and political parties.
gov — This particular domain extension is reserved solely for government agencies. edu — Only educational institutions are able to acquire the. edu domain extension. info is an open TLD available for all users.
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PHP - How to get pretty or clean urls/links using HTACCESS - Full Tutorial[Part 1 of 2] Google supports URLs as defined by RFC Herbal alternative medicine defined by the stgucture as Workout meal planning must be percent encoded. Unreserved ASCII characters may be left in the non-encoded form. Additionally, characters in the non-ASCII range should be UTF-8 encoded. Recommended : Simple, descriptive words in the URL:.
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