Creating a URL that is SEO friendly certainly isn’t hard, but it still needs careful consideration because you shouldn’t be changing URLs all the time. If you eventually decide to change your URL that would mean you need to create a redirect, which sparks a whole other chain of reactions.
So, it is important to ensure you are happy with the URL you have decided on and you aren’t going to make any quick changes. There are a number of different aspects you need to consider when creating new URLs. The most important aspect being SEO!
You need to consider SEO when structuring your URLs. There are a lot of different components to a URL. One of the important components you need to think of is the security (which in the URL equates to the “https”). This is a pretty basic aspect but you need to ensure this is up and running in the first place.
If you are wondering about the other aspects that ensure your URL is SEO friendly, have a read on below:
Lower Case
All symbols in your URL need to be lower case, there is pretty much no exception. Most web crawlers and servers produce URLs in the lower case, but this isn’t always the situation, so you don’t want to miss out on potential traffic.
Think about it, when a user searches for something on a search engine they generally do not use capital letters. So, this should be the same case for your own URLs. To ensure your website and URL have the exact match, make sure that you include no capital letters in your URL.
No Numbers
Sometimes you’ll find that an automatic URL will spit out a series of numbers at the end of your URL, you do not what this. The ultimate goal of your URL is to keep it as simple as possible. Therefore you do not need any set of random numbers at the end of your URL.
Sometimes in the URL you will be talking about a topic that offers a specific number of solutions, for example “the 5 steps to creating a SEO friendly URL”. What happens if you come back to this content at a later point in time and you want to add another step?
One of the big things in SEO is evergreen content. This is content that remains relevant for a long time. If you keep chopping and changing the content and you URL doesn’t reflect what’s actually on the page, then you are going to have an issue, which is why numbers in the URL is not recommended.
Include Keywords
Producing a SEO friendly URL is not rocket science! So, make sure you include keywords in the URL, these should be keywords that you are targeting for this page. This is certainly something that Google looks at when indexing and ranking your page.
Include Hyphens
Every word in your URL should be met with a hyphen, that way it is much easier for the search engine bot to understand what your URL is. The difference between hyphens and underscores is pretty non-existent in SEO. It doesn’t have too much difference in terms of rankings, but when it comes to the user experience that’s a little bit of a different story.
People read and understand hyphens a lot better then they do with underscores, so it is better to create a URL that people understand better. If people themselves understand it better, then it is certainly recommended that you use this method. So, make sure from now on that any new pages you create have hyphens and not underscores.
Tina Johnson helped bring The Marketing Folks from a-weekly newsletter to a full-fledged news site by creating a new website and branding. She continues to assist in keeping the site responsive and well organized for the readers. As a contributor to The Marketing Folks, Tara mainly covers industry new.
