How to create URLs that help with SEO
Why are they so important?
The URL is the main navigational tool when going from page to page that people recognise.
It appears below the page title in all search engine results pages, it appears as the link title on embedded page links when the user hovers over them and of course the URL is always present in the web browser’s address bar to indicate the current page being viewed. Therefore the more descriptive your URL the more click-throughs you’ll receive and the better navigational experience for your users. There are over 200 factors that impact how your website ranks and the URL name is one of them so getting the URL correct will rank your page higher in search engine results if it includes keywords that are mirrored in the page text.
So how do you compose the best URL?
It needs to be readable and descriptive without being overly long so it is easy to copy and paste and fully visible in the search results. Also it needs to include your keywords if the page is targeting a specific search term. So for example the following page URL was automatically generated for this post:
www.varnmedia.co.uk/07/18/ (not active link)
I made this human readable and descriptive of the page content by adding the words ‘blog-URL-construction-for-SEO’. I have kept the descriptive words below a maximum of 5 or 6 for user friendliness and including my keywords ‘URL’ and ‘SEO’:
www.varnmedia.co.uk/blog-URL-construction-for-SEO/ (not active link)
Anyone looking at this URL will know that they will be visiting the blog page for Varn and that it will be about creating URLs that help with SEO. Please contact us for more useful tips.
