When you want to launch a new blog, either if you have to manage your website, you should get the answers to the following questions: what is SEO URL? Am I following the best practices?
As you probably know, the URL topic is a big deal that can affect your SEO marketing strategy and the traffic on your website. If you upload a new article or you create a new webpage, you should decide in advance a structure of your URL. How?
Your visitors, and Google, need to have a clear idea about the path to reach every content you publish.
Don’t get anyone confused about it! You are creating a flow with some marketing hacks startups, using a URL structure that follows also a marketing funnel concept. That’s awesome. Follow the next chapters to find out about the best URL strategy!
What Do You Need to Do for Your SEO URL?
You need some search engine optimization tips to have a better ranking on Google and you should think about your URLs in advance, before launching your blog/website. That’s pretty clear.
Don’t make a structure comprised of long sentences, with stop words like “a”, “with”, “the”: make your URL structure easier that you can! Simplicity is the secret that can bring results: nobody likes complicated things!
Google as well! It’s considering a short, organized and clear structure as a ranking factor. Remember to plan everything in advance: changing a URL when it’s already rank on Google, can affect page rank.
Website Structure for SEO
The first time you meet a URL in your business life is when you plan your domain and you choose your host service. What is SEO URL? Already at the beginning of your marketing journey, you should know it!
The top-level domain (TLD), for example www.marketingpredictor.com, is the main URL: it’s your website, where everything begins! The TLD needs to be planned considering your market and keywords.
What about the hosting service? Choose a service close to your audience. That strategy can affect the performance of your website in term of load time: it’s a Google ranking factor!
CDN to Boost Your SEO URL
You can help the HTTP request with a CDN server. What is a CDN? If your audience is located far from your host server, a CDN is coming to help. It’s working like host support in the location where the HTTP request is starting.
One of the most popular VDN service? Cloudflare is one of the services we are using at Marketing Predictor. Your URLs are going to have a boost: implement it with a CDN service for a search engine help!
If your business is based in the USA you should go for .com! Unless you use a CDN service!
Design your website structure like the following one: home page, categories (also sub-categories, it depends on your business) and product/article (represented by keywords). That would be ideal. Get ready for an SEO page rank improvement!
Build Your URLs and Keep Going With The Structure
Now it’s time to build your URL structure based on your website concept, like we mentioned before.
I suggest building something like that: www.domainname.com/category/sub-category/keyword
What is mandatory for an SEO URL strategy? Share on XIt’s important to use a dash “-“ between words in category, sub-category, and keyword. Don’t use “-” in the domain name because it can create issues in your marketing strategy for brand identity: how can you advertise a brand name with a dash?
It’s a structure pretty clear and simple for everyone. Every user will remember it. Nobody will have any kind of issues experiencing your website, considering amazing your product/service and your content as well. Be sure to have content related to the URL path and keyword.
What Is SEO URL On WordPress?
If you manage your website using a CMS like WordPress, the part of the URL that you can optimize every time you create a new post/page is called “slug”. What is SEO URL on WordPress?
Using the plugin Yoast you will be able to optimize the “slug”. You are going to keep the website structure organized and protecting it from mistakes. It’s important to include the keyword you want to rank for in the “slug”: another important SEO URL tip!
WordPress, through this feature, allows you to keep going with an optimized URL structure. Avoiding common mistakes related to the permalink structure and sub-pages will make your URL strategy stunning! Isn’t amazing?
Why Should You Follow That URL Path With No Stop Words?
First of all, it looks organized and a user can easily remember it, as we said! Also, sharing the URL on Social Media, the snippet is going to be great and a user can know instantaneously what your article/webpage is talking about.
The “slug” in your URL needs to be without stop words. For example: www.domainname.com/category/sub-category/clothes-for-kids
The “slug”: clothes-for-kids should be clothes-kids, “for” is a stop word that makes your structure heavy.
Why your URL without stop words? A Google searcher is more willing to search on Google without using the stop words we mentioned: that’s why! You are going to have a perfect match among keyword, query and URL slug!
Importance of Keywords in the URL
What is SEO URL for keywords? It’s mandatory for ranking: having an URL with the keyword of your article is everything in SEO. That’s the answer, without forgetting a keyword planner help!
Keywords are everything in SEO, also in the URL structure. This strategy is going to affect positively your SEO strategy because Google sees that your URL and your article are strictly connected. Don’t repeat the keywords several times:
www.domainname.com/clothes/clothes-for-kids
Avoid misspelling and mistakes in your URL: Google doesn't like it at all! Share on XCanonical Link and SSL Certificate
If you have not done it yet, do it immediately: switch from HTTP to HTTPS, having an SSL certificate. Google gives more visibility to HTTPS websites because are reliable and they have a system that protects users data.
You can identify them because they have a lock logo when you visit these type of websites. Setting the canonical tag in your URL is one of the most important search engine optimization tips: you are avoiding to have duplicate contents that can punish your page rank.
If you have some articles/webpages that can be reached by different URL paths, you should tell Google which the main article is. How? Setting the canonical tag for that specific post.
What Is The Best Tool To Set Everything?
If you are using WordPress as CMS to manage your website, you should download Yoast SEO. We strongly recommend it again. It will give you the opportunity to change your URL structure, “slug”, and the snippet preview.
Would you like to switch to HTTPS? You should check the documentation of your hosting provider. Don’t forget to avoid more than 1 redirect 301, otherwise, you will generate a redirect loop, it will negatively affect your SEO strategy.
More redirections and more HTTP requests affect your website in term of performance. Your visitors will bounce your URLs immediately, according to the bad experience your website provides: Bounce Rate (BR) is a ranking factor!
Recap: Optimize SEO URL Strategy. What is SEO URL?
Follow a friendly user URL structure path
- www.domainname.com/category/sub-category/keyword
Keywords in the slug and no stop words
- www.domainname.com/category/sub-category/clothes-kids
User safety data protection
- www.domainname.com/category/sub-category/keyword
