To determine if what you are offering is relevant to the information a searcher is looking for, it’s important to understand that it’s not only the content of your site that Google’s search spiders crawl. Believe it or not, the search giant also takes your site’s URLs into consideration. As such, no matter what kind of website you have, make sure that you follow the rules on creating SEO-friendly URLs if you want to improve your search rankings. Discussed below are 5 simple rules to follow.
- Remove the fluff from your URLs.
According to Michiel Heijmans, senior online marketing consultant at Yoast, your URLs should always be focused. To make them more searchable, make sure that you remove “stop words” from your URLs. These words include “a,” “of,” and “the” among others. Michiel explained that 99% of the time, these words do not add anything of value to your URL. Words like “are” or “have” are also not needed because they do not really tell your audience what your web page is all about.
- The length of your URLs doesn’t matter.
The length of your URL doesn’t make your website any more Google-friendly. However, experts do recommend that you keep your URLs as short as possible. According to Michiel, shorter URLs are more focused and structured, as compared to longer ones. But no matter what the length of your URL, see to it that they contain relevant keywords as Google bolds the keywords used in search. This makes your website more visible and noticeable in search result pages.
- Don’t use underscores.
Avoid using underscores in your URLs. According to Michiel, underscores connect the words and make them into one. For better results, you should use dashes instead.
- Use even shorter URLs if you’re running a company website.
If you’re running a company website, which contains information about your company and nothing else, it would be wise to use the shortest URL possible. No matter how many web pages you have, you should keep your URLs short. For example: abc.com/about-us or abc.com/contact.
- Include product names if you’re running an e-commerce site.
If you own an e-commerce website, it certainly helps to include product names and categories in your URLs. Not only will this make your URLs more Google-friendly, it can also provide convenience for your customers. For example: abc.com/category/product-name.
Always remember that your URLs are a vital part of your website. Therefore, see to it that they are also optimised for search engines to ensure your site’s online visibility.
Is your website due for a spring-clean? Perhaps your SEO is out of date (or worse, nonexistent!) or you’re ready for a whole new look. Contact us today for a free quote, or recommendations on improving your site. Remember that your website’s first impressions really matter!
