Even though Shakespeare’s Juliet lamented by uttering those immortal lines (What is there in a name……), we might as well exclaim, What is there in a URL? But for the SEO world, it means everything! As a matter of fact, one of the most fundamental Search Engine Optimization techniques involve manipulating SEO-friendly URL structures. A superior URL structure surely helps the indexation process of a website more than anything else, a fact generally overlooked by many.
However, it may be worthwhile analyzing the elements of a URL that comprises quite a few crucial pieces of information so that steps may be taken to create a structure that may help rank as highly as possible.
Let us start with a simple case so that we can identify the different components of a URL:
Now, there are around three elements of a URL that can be customized, which includes the Domain name, the sub directories and the file name. Please read on to see how each of these elements can be individually optimized to gain an overall effect.
The Domain name, which is your address on the world wide web is the most visible part of the URL and is usually being communicated in emails, business cards, etc. Since a domain name needs to be remembered well by visitors, it should be kept as small as possible, preferably consisting of not more than one or two words. Previously, keywords were mostly used here but Google currently is not in favor of keyword-rich domain names and so this practice has been abandoned. However, after the Penguin updates (Sept 28, 2012) the number of poor quality keyword-rich domains were further reduced which are often referred to as exact match domains or EMDs (Reference Mathew(Matt) Cutts, head of Webspam at Google).
Domain Extensions: A dot com (.com) domain is still considered as the most popular domain extension. However, if you take a look at the range of domain extensions on the search result pages, you are sure to find that the largest (87%) have .com extension, while the rest consist of 6% a.org and 3% a.net. However, domain extension does not seem to matter much for SEO, though local country specific domain extensions can get you a reasonably good traffic.
Subdirectories or sub folders comprise the Depth and Width of these folders, where Depth reckons the number of sub-folders that are found in a domain. This generally is reflected in the breadcrumbs. (Breadcrumbs typically appear horizontally across the top of a web page, often below title bars or headers. They provide links back to each previous page the user navigated through to get to the current page or—in hierarchical site structures—the parent pages of the current one.) However, the breadcrumbs for a page on any e-commerce site may look like this.
Example of Depth:
Home > shoes > men
Here, the page with shoes for men is two levels deep, while the appropriate URL structure for a product in this directory should look like this:
http://www.domain.com/shoes/men/black.html
Incidentally, providing the keyword (e.g. ‘shoes’) for the sub folder sounds much better than providing generic names or numbers, such as (bl304). This method not only serves as a better navigational tool for users but also helps search engines to properly index the website.
What is more, these will show up in the analytics, thereby making data interpretation so much easier.
Width refers to the number of pages in a category or class. The website from the earlier example might project ‘shoes’ for boys, sub-adults and adults. In other words, the width of the shoes category in this case is 3 (three) pages – boys, sub-adults and adults. However, the width of a directory seldom influences ranking, nevertheless, the pages must be unique.
Page Names are easier to choose; easier to change. Since it often becomes difficult to change domain name, domain extensions or subfolder structure, many resort to changing their page names. However, when you are confronted by choosing an appropriate page name, usability and keyword are needed to be considered first. Take a look at the following URLs and see for yourself which one looks more appropriate.
http://domain.com/products/238566
http://domain.com/products/canon-eos-400d
Needless to say, the latter would be chosen by all for the simple reason that even a child can see that it is a product page for Canon EOS400d digital camera. But the first URL hardly gives you any idea about it contents.
Search engines, to be precise will face the same problem. Therefore, it is a good idea to implement keywords.
Static URL vis-à-vis Dynamic URL
Dynamic URLs can usually be identified as they have special characters, such as question marks and ampersands. These identify several parameters, often the language or user ID. But this can also mean that the same content can have different URLs.
One of the most common URL-related myths is that search engines are unable to crawl dynamic URLs. This is a matter of the past.
Incidentally, some webmasters try to rewrite dynamic URLs to make them appear static. This is unnecessary because the content on the page can be crawled and Google can interpret the different parameters. The algorithm can figure out which parameters do not matter.
Conclusion
Using an appropriate URL structure is synonymous with good SEO technique – a phenomenon that mostly remains disused and neglected. Nevertheless, it gives a shot in the arm right at the beginning.
When it comes to selecting an appropriate URL, emphasis should be given on usability; if it is good for users, it is also good for search engines. Use keywords discretely instead of putting haphazard words and numerical. Also, do not try to make your subfolders much too deep or use them over sub-domains.
When splitting words, use hyphens instead of underscores in your URL. And lastly, remember, Google can jolly well read and index dynamic URLs – there is no need to change the structure for indexing purposes.