Make Your URL’s Work For You.

Posted on 27 August 2009

URLs are not the boss of you. You are the boss of them. Take control, rewrite responsibly, and make your URLs more user and search engine friendly.

You want a better URL? Follow these guidlelines and make it so.

• Explain yourself. Your URL should be descriptive of your site. Not only in your domain but also in your subdomains and directory name. When a user, or a search engine for that matter, visits your site they should know or at least have a pretty good idea of what it is all about. There is no need for mystery- you might think that is alluring but most visitors won’t and search engines will think your URL is irrelevant. Be simple, be obvious. That is what makes for a good URL.
• Short is good. The longer the URL the more difficult it is to pass it along. Think about it, even if you love a website you aren’t likely to copy and paste it into your Facebook status if it is 100 characters long- and you wouldn’t even consider writing it down. You want people to share and tweet about your website but you they won’t if it takes every character Twitter allows to post your URL. Be descriptive but also be concise.
• Use words not numbers. While the number 1234 might mean something obvious to you, it probably won’t to a user. Use words to describe so that any and every user knows exactly what to expect from your page. The only time numbers should be used is if they are specific to the page, such as a page dedicated only to the year 1985, or a page that revolves around the band the B-52s. Again, your URL should be obvious (OBVIOUS.)
• Use keywords. Seriously, didn’t I tell you how important keyword targeting is? The URL is another instance in which choosing the right keywords can make a big difference. Use one or two of your chosen keywords in your URL (as long as it makes sense.) Not only will it make it clear what the topic of your page is, it will also help in the ranking department.
• Be consistent. You should maintain the same URL format throughout your site.
• Use hyphens to separate words in your URL. For example (just off the top of my head…)

http://www.seo-web-spider.com/inbound-links/raise-your-inbound-anchors-text/

• Static URLs  are just better. Yes, some search engines have no trouble navigating through dynamic URLs, but users do. Dynamic URLs can be extremely frustrating for users. All of those question marks. It makes you wonder, are they somehow unsure of what their site is about? Don’t even get me started on & and =.  Please, make it simple for people to understand.

The key thing to remember when re-writing your URLs is to make them simple and descriptive. Once you have that, you can count on an increase in traffic and higher click-through-rates. Make those URLs work for you!

Other great URL resources

* http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls

* http://www.seomoz.org/blog/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls-the-best-practice-for-seo-is-still-clear

* http://www.seoconsultants.com/articles/1000/urls.asp

* http://www.seobook.com/do-you-need-use-url-rewriting

(Photo credit goes to svilen001 at sxc.hu)