We often overlook the importance of creating URLs that matter to your customers. However, a properly structured URL can be the gateway to your site for the user who has come looking for products and services that your site is providing.
URL structure optimization is one of the most important things, which is overlooked. When you are taking care of trivial things like URL optimization at the time of website optimization then, the success of your website is evident.
A properly created and optimized URL structure can be helpful in enhancing the user experience. It can be extremely helpful in making Google like your website & its content. Your URL structure is the first impression and it is the first thing that comes in front of the user. This is why URL optimization is considered an important part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
By properly optimizing and creating the site’s URL and taking care of other trivial things — even small businesses can help their website rank high over the SERP. In this blog post, we’ll talk about the top five tips to optimize your website URL structure. Read to know more.
Let’s get started:
- Create Simple URLs
Don’t create complex and overly populated URLs, or it might diminish its value. Google says, “A site’s URL structure should be as simple as possible. Consider organizing your content so that URLs are constructed logically and in a manner that is most intelligible to humans (when possible, readable words rather than long ID numbers).”
Short URLs are obviously more readable and the user can more easily understand a URL which is without any ambiguity. A Simple URL will enable users to get an idea of the website’s content just by looking at the URL. You can use hyphens to separate words, but never use underscores (Google won’t understand it). Make your URLs free from a, or, but & the. It is essential that you have created a URL that is readable for both — Google & users.
- Fit in Your Keywords
Fitting in the right keywords, in the right ratio would be pretty helpful for the search engine & for the user to discover your site. But, then you have to make sure that — unwantedly fitting in too many keywords will only make it count for spamming. While keywords in URLs are never a high ranking factor, yet they are one of the important aspects of optimizing your URL.
Without any doubt, using keywords in URLs are useful for blog post pages & transactional pages. When optimizing URLs for transactional pages, you must use the primary keywords. However, a lot of SEO experts believe that using keywords in the URL is not good for social media marketing as — such URLs are not social media share-friendly.
- Make sure the URLs match the Titles.
So, when the user looks at the URL, an expectation with respect to the content of the web page automatically arises. For instance, a URL that reads as — admedia.com/10-benefits-using-native-adverising, if the title of the page reads as — 10 benefits of using native advertising in your digital marketing strategy.
- Short & Crip URLs will be more popular.
Short and crisp URLs are usually better than long & complicated ones. It’s easy for the user to understand and decipher the content on the web page. While it is not always a good idea to worry too much & too often about the length of the URL — you should try keeping its size from 50–60 characters. The idea is, short URLs are easy to remember, can be copied easily, and feels good to the eyes when shared over social media.
For most people who are running blogs, there are chances that they use a CMS like WordPress, where a URL automatically gets added to a post. This feature is handy, but in some cases, the URL generated could be too long for users to read & understand. This will lead to the truncation of the URL in the SERP diminishing its quality.
- Go with the Conventional Approach.
Another important aspect of URL optimization is going with the conventional approach. Think twice before experimenting with something new & unconventional. For instance, don’t use “_” underscore, rather use “-” dashes, make use of the lowercase characters, avoid using gap words like “the” & “and” as they aren’t of any relevance.
Conclusion:
While it may take some time to structure the URL in the right way, it could be helpful for the success of your business & website. In the beginning, this might take some time and a bit of planning, but once you have your key URL defined in place, it is easy to get in place the URL for several other pages. URL optimization is an easy part of your website’s SEO strategy — and you should make sure that with this small effort, you are getting ready for a better user experience.