URL structure

Hello there!

Once you have understood the fundamentals of SEO – improving the structure of your domain names and URL is the next major step. Knowing how to improve your URL structure, by utilizing tools to make short URL’s will be incredibly beneficial to improve your overall structure.

Here is a list of 10 best practices that you can utilize to improve the URL structure:

1. Using a single domain and subdomain, whenever possible:

There is a lot of evidence which showcases improved results when a website shifts from a domain to a subdomain. Search engines play an important role in judging the content on a parent domain, passing to the various subdomains.

Your blog is more likely to perform better and rank higher by using this technique. It is well known that your blog is more likely to perform better in rankings by making sure that it performs well on a subdomain or a particular root directory.

2. Increased readability is always better:

You must always strive to make URL’s more readable for humans! This directly translates to more readability to search engines as well.

As a URL being accessible is a major part of their SEO and these search engines can help figure out what kind of content people are engaging with or not. The URL readability must be clean and perfect to be understood easily.

3. Inclusion of keywords in the URL:

Including keywords in the URL is incredibly beneficial for social media or emails. Anchor text is a must-have as URLs get copy-pasted quite frequently. Another reason why keywords are beneficial in your URL because keywords in the URL also show up in search results.

4. Canonicalization of multiple URLs:

When two URLs have very similar content, then it is a better idea to consider canonicalizing content with the help of 301 redirect. When you use duplicate content this can cause a fall in the rankings which can harm your search engine traffic potential.

5. Excluding major dynamic parameters:

Dynamic parameters are sometimes used for tracking clicks, however, they can make your URLs look more clunky and filled with junk. This can make your URL look untrustworthy, thereby reducing the overall clicks that your link should be receiving.

6. Shorter URL’s are always better than longer ones:

Short URLs are much more preferable compared to longer ones. The longer the URL, the more difficulty appears in usability and user experience. Short URLs are great for easy copy and paste accessibility. This is great for embedding and can enhance the usability for tweets, pins, emails, links etc.

7. Titles and URL should always match:

When the title of a webpage matches the content in a URL, this improves the overall experience of a user on your website. This lets the user know in advance, on what to expect before the webpage even loads.

8. Not necessary to include stop words:

There are certain words in the English language which enhance readability but do not enhance the functionality of the URL. Some of the different types of stop words, which can be avoided is (but, and, of, the, etc).

In conclusion, these are a few good practices to follow to improve the structure of your URL. The next time you’re writing out URLs, keep our tips in mind to make ensure that your URL structure is a success.