Structuring a URL is mandatory for an enhanced user experience and search engine exposure. Online businesses are represented with the URLs so it needs to be meaningful, human readable and search engine friendly. Following are some of the tips that can help you in structuring the link addresses.
1. URLs shall be readable
Use meaningful words in the URL to make it readable. Consumers are more likely to click on a website that makes sense to them. You can replace any abbreviation with words that can be a company name or a keyword for a better understanding of the visitors.
2. Eliminate IDs and numbers
Eliminate the IDs, numbers, special characters and codes that are often generated by a blogging or eCommerce platform. It makes the URL look ugly and unworthy to be clicked so remove them now.
3. Canonicalize URLs directing to a common content
The URLs that have different structures but direct visitors to a single content may create issues of duplication and plagiarism. Use canonical tags to stay safe and justify uniqueness in the eyes of search engines.
- What is URL Canonicalization and how to Use Canonical Tag Properly?
- How to Use Rel=Canonical for Content Syndication and SEO
4. Cover your keywords
You can build authority by covering keywords in the URLs. It can be in the domain name, category or web page name, but making its excessive use may harm the ranking of your website. So, be wise in adding keywords to the URLs.
5. Harmonize the URL with the page title
In search engine and social media, your URLs appear with respective titles. To gain customers’ trust, you need to harmonize them by adding the same text to the URL that is used in the title of the web page.
6. Exclude stop words from the URL
Stop words such as and, of, a, the, but, etc. that are used in the title of a web page can be excluded for shortening the URL structure. The use of stop words is not considered necessary in the URLs. So, you can take into account according to your business specific needs. If you are using WordPress platform, you can use Yoast SEO plugin to automatically remove stop words from Permalink:
7. Limit the number of folders
Folders are used for categorization of products and services, whereas using it more than acceptable times may not seem original. Some of the stores add a folder name for each product attribute, which may give a perception of a deep website. In results, the customer may leave in spite of digging up the store.
8. Use word separators
Word separators are used for adding a long tail keyword, a complete product name or a post title in the URL to make it readable. For this purpose, you can use hyphens and underscores as these are the suggested word separators.
9. Set moderate redirections
You can set redirections to take customers from one page to another that may help to browse various pages and increase your exposure. Setting a redirection once or twice is acceptable; whereas keeping the customers in a loop of redirection may not help you gain trust and rankings.
10. Consolidate the www and non-www URLs
The www and non-www version of your domain name are dealt in separately in search results. So, it is recommended to consolidate the two by setting a redirection from one to the other.
Hope so that above tips will benefit you in refining the structure of the URLs.
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Hi Brain,
Thanks for sharing this. I was actually thinking of what exactly I should do increase my blog ranking before I came across Anil’s post where he made mention of permalink.
Though I have always avoided the use of stop words in my permalink structure but this post has reaffirmed my decision that that’s what experts are already doing.
Emenike
Thank you very much for sharing this….which is one you suggest anchor text or just the link itself?
Thanks for sharing this useful information about URL. But I have a question which one you recommend, an anchor text or just a link in your article?
Does using sub-domain instead of folder have any effect on the ranking?
For example, blog.domain.com instead of domain.com/blog
Hi HARSH,
Thanks a ton for this post, After reading this blog post , I felt like I need to change the URLs of my blog post, Could you please let me know the WordPress plugin which can help me in this case (To redirect the old URL to new URL without losing the traffic.
Looking back to hear from you.
Thanks in advance.
Hey Saimadhu,
Read this:https://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-change-your-wordpress-permalink-without-using-traffic-permalinks-migration-plugin.html
Great article and I support your thoughts that Permalinks structure is one of the important parameters to rank higher in the Google search engine. This has helped me a lot and I hope it will increase my rank in Google.
Hey Yash,
Happy to help.
Nice post…Harsh…
If i make some changes in my url now, will it affect my page rank..or will it show 404 page for my old urls…?
@Paventhan
Usually WordPress handle redirection itself. However, it’s better you use a plugin such as redirection to redirect old URL to new URL.
Thanks for sharing the original article. I like articles of this kind, ones that make you really think. Anyway, I agree, be very careful ethical issues can arise once you have crossed the line.
Hi Brain,
Structuring Url tips, it the most important for all who are running the website, these tips helps me a lot thank you brain for such excellent tips. keep posting.
Hi Brain,
The way presented the article about the URL sounds good, and of course this is most important point for who are running the website, am also one them, i believe this articles helps a lot to the users and as well as to me. thanks bro..for such a awesome tips.
Nice post but I would like to tell you the difference between using hyphens and underscore in post URL.
Hyphens and Underscore are the common word separators used in the URL. My recommendation is to avoid underscores as word separators in URLs.
An example would be when you google “brown leather couches” . In case you would like your page to feature on the search results, naming your URL “http://yourdomain.com/brown-leather-couches” is worlds apart from naming it to “http://yourdomain.com/brown_leather_couches” . The presence of underscores would cause your URL to be indexed as “brownleathercouches”, which is entirely irrelevant to what you MEANT to provide.
Hi Alastiar,
Article was informative, In some areas, the top ranking keyword’s URL is like http://www.example.com/category/category/product but still they are in the list, keywords related to financial products especially Bank websites..
Great post on permalink structure. Really now its a important thing to rank higher in Google and other search engines. Thank you very much for sharing such great content with us.
Nice post. I have a doubt in this section. “Exclude stop words from the URL”. Is this a Yoast SEO premium feature?
@Mohammad
This feature is available on free version.
Will it change old URLs or only new ones?
Thanks Harsh for your reply….