How to Create SEO-Friendly URL?
What is SEO-Friendly URL?
SEO-Friendly URL is human-readable text that was designed to replace the numbers (IP addresses) that computers use to communicate with servers. They also identify the file structure on the given website. A URL consists of a protocol, domain name, and path (which includes the specific subfolder structure where a page is located).
URLs also contain things like the specific folders and/or subfolders that are on a given website, any parameters (like click tracking or session IDs) that might be stored in the URL, and anchors that allow visitors to jump to a specific point in the resource.
Why do URLs matter for SEO?
Improved user experience
A well-crafted URL provides both humans and search engines an easy-to-understand indication of what the destination digital page will be about.
Rankings
URLs are a minor ranking factor search engines use when determining a particular page or resource’s relevance to a search query. While they do give weight to the authority of the overall domain itself, keyword use in a URL can also act as a ranking factor.
Links
In a pinch, well-written URLs can serve as their own anchor text when copied and pasted as links in forums, blogs, social media networks, or other online venues.
Tips for Creating a Good SEO-Friendly URL Structure:
Always edit a page’s URL to be relevant.
A surprising number of websites will still use automatically generated digital URLs that look like a string of gibberish. That’s skipping a big SEO opportunity, while also creating a more confusing experience for your visitors.
The first and most important thing you need to do for your website’s URLs is to simply commit to customizing each one based on what’s on the web marketing page.
Follow a standard URL structure.
Determine what categories and subcategories you’ll be using and how you’ll portray them in the URLs of web pages that belong in each category.
Be careful not to let things get too complicate here – too many categories will bog down your URLs and make them confusing rather than helpful.
Keep it short and simple.
Good URLs are short and to the point. Make sure you aren’t filling yours with any unnecessary words or characters, and avoid keyword stuffing. Having the same keyword in your URL more than once won’t do you any good.
While most of your visitors will use links or bookmarks to access specific marketing pages of your website rather than going to the URL directly, you want it to at least be plausible that someone could remember a specific URL if they wanted to.
Use your primary keyword
For every page on your website, you should have a primary target keyword in mind that you want it to rank for in the search engines. Obviously this should be something that specifically describes what’s on the web page, while also being a common term used by people looking for what’s on the page.
Make sure your primary keyword is part of the page’s URL. It may work to simply use the keyword as the part of the URL specific to your page.
Use hyphens to separate words.
You can’t include spaces in a URL, so SEO best practice is to use hyphens to separate words. This will signal to Google where the breaks between words are, and make it easier for your visitors to understand URLs than if the words all ran together.
Remove stop words.
You want URLs to be short and simple, which means you never need things like pronouns and articles. So when translating a page title into a URL structure, drop any common stop words in the title, such as: a, the, and, or, but, an, of, etc.