Having properly formatted URLs (filenames for pages on your website) will help search engines such as Google crawl your site more efficiently and will help visitors understand the content within the site.
What are some good practices to creating search friendly URLs?
1) Use keywords in your URL. Be sure the keywords are relative to the specific page and that users are searching for these keywords.
For example (shoe store example): http://www.yourdomainname.com/shoes.htm
NOT: http://www.yourdomainname.com/ae98653lksdfuoir908.htm
If your website dynamically creates URLs for your pages (some content management systems do this), be sure to rewrite these URLs as they are posted to your web server.
2) Use multiple keywords words. Be as descriptive as you can when creating the URL, without having too many words. Of course make sure it’s relative to the content of the page.
For example: http://www.yourdomainname.com/green-shoes.htm
3) Separate words with a dash. Search engines like Google prefer that you use a dash (“-”) between the words in your URL and not an underscore (“_”). And do not put words together.
For example: http://www.yourdomainname.com/green-shoes.htm
NOT: http://www.yourdomainname.com/green_shoes.htm
NOT: http://www.yourdomainname.com/greenshoes.htm
4) Create a simple directory structure. This means create a relatively flat folder structure in your website. Don’t make the search crawlers keep going deeper and deeper into your directory structure.
For example: http://www.yourdomainname.com/walking-shoes/green-shoes.htm
NOT: http://www.yourdomainname.com/shoes/walking/small/green/withlaces/green-shoes.htm
Following these simple steps when planning and creating your website URLs will help the search engines crawl your site easier and will help your users better understand what content the page contains.
If you need help creating search engine friendly URLs please contact us.
