The SEO Effects of URLs

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There are numerous factors that revolve around search engine optimization, and one of them is the uniform resource locator, otherwise known as the url. Because of its impact in SEO, many webmasters are regularly using the url checker tool, especially when searching for the best url to use for their websites and web pages. The url is actually very important because it serves as the web address that locates domains. A single mistake in typing the url result in significant impact, leading visitors to other sites, or to an error page.

It is for this very reason why urls are important, and must be given due consideration of in order to avoid costly mistakes and loss of web traffic. In SEO, its impact may not be so great, but urls still serve its purpose in capturing visitors and in pushing domains higher to the front pages of the search engine results.

URL Dos and Donts

Dos:

  • Keep the web url short and simple as possible.
  • Limit the characters to less than 2080 or less. Internet Explorer will only render web addresses to less than this number only. This means, Internet Explorer will no longer read web addresses longer than this certain amount of characters.
  • Insert keywords in your web address
  • Make your url descriptive of the webpage, or of the website.

Donts:

  • Don’t use space. To fill in the space, use hyphens or underscore to separate words and to make the web address readable for easier grasp and understanding. However, word separators must be used sparingly and with utmost caution to avoid issues.
  • Do not use parameters. If this is unavoidable, then limit the usage of parameters to two or less.
  • Do not use hyphens and underscores too much. This will only make the url spammy to look, and search engine bots will treat it as spam.

How to Optimize Your Web Url

Taking a closer look at the results of the search engine search queries, you will observe that the ones that are ranking well in the front page are those with simple, brief, and readable urls. There are keywords relevant to the search terms, as well. In fact, search engine bots are partly capturing web pages based on their urls, and rank them accordingly. This is proven by the fact that these keywords within the uniform resource locator are bolded. This means, they were used by the search crawlers when finding and ranking websites. This only implies the importance of urls in SEO. Therefore, webmasters should know how to use urls for optimizing websites for the search engines. Here are a few tips to start with.



 

Keep Relevancy in Mind

Keywords are important in the url because they are captured and used when ranking websites. Therefore, a semantically correct url will make sense not only to the search bots but to the search engine users, as well. Many users are looking at the web address to get a short glimpse of what the webpage is all about. For instance, a review keyword in a url will tell visitors that the webpage is a review page for a certain product. Take note that relevancy is one of the key SEO factors. Thus, make sure that the terms in the url are relevant to the page.

Anchor Texts

Short and semantically relevant uniform resource locators can also serve as an anchor text when inserting them in web contents. But to make it work, you have to make your url brief and concise, as well as relevant to the search queries.

Get the Most Accurate Keywords

If you are targeting for a particular search term, then your web address should contain the main search phrases for SEO purposes. If they are no longer available, then use separators like underscores. This will also generate the same SEO benefits.

With search engine optimization in mind, webmasters have all the more reasons to use url checker tools that are readily available online today. They are vital in finding specific web pages, and these tools are also helpful to webmasters optimizing their sites for better search engine visibility.