There is lots of confusion regarding URL structures of a website. People are generally confused regarding things like whether they should have longer of shorter URLs, whether the URL should contain keywords or not, etc. so that the URLs are SEO friendly. We are here to clear your confusion about these questions. Obviously, every website type has its own different rules for creating a URL but, there are also certain general rules that apply to almost every kind of website type.
Length
It is recommended that you try to keep your URLs short. Although even if you keep your URLs long, it wouldn’t make a difference to Google but, definitely shorter URLs are more focused. However, Google will show only what it thinks is important to the visitors. So, it may cut off the URL as per it wishes to, just like it has a particular count for meta descriptions, after which it cuts off the description. This is why it is better to keep the URL short and up-to-the-point.
Keywords
You might have seen URLs with numbers and punctuation marks. This makes the URLs unidentifiable for the people as well as search engines. They fail to understand what the page is about. So, instead of using these random elements, you must try using important keywords in your URL. This will not only make it clear to visitors and search engines what your page talks about but, Google also bolds those keywords used in search, even in the URL.
No detailing required
You need not make sure of having proper grammar in the URL. There is no need to include complete sentences. This means you can omit words like a, an, the, of, etc. This is because these words add no value to the URL. You may even omit verbs like ‘are’ and ‘have’. Your URL can be understandable without these words too.
Underscores
When you use underscores to separate two words in a URL, Google considers them as one single word. For example, if you write make_urls_seo_friendly, Google will show it as ‘makeurlsseofriendly’. So, you should instead use hyphens to separate your words like make-urls-seo-friendly.
Subfolders
It is better to use a subfolder instead of a subdomain. It is recommended to set up content within a subfolder instead of a subdomain because search engines treat subdomains as different entities. They don’t pass rank and authority to it as they do to subfolders. So, instead of having https://subject.sitename.com as your URL, you should have www.sitename.com/subject.
www and non-www domains
There are two ways your domain gets indexed in search engines – www and non-www versions. If your site also has these two versions, search engines will view your site as having duplicate content. Also, some of your backlinks might be pointing to the www version while, the others would be pointing to the non-www version. In order to solve this issue, you can use the 301 redirect to point one version of your site to another to make sure that both the versions are consolidated.
There are many more SEO factors to be considered depending on the type of business you deal with. For detailed assistance, you can get in touch with Jain Technosoft, who provide the best SEO services in Bangalore. We have a team of SEO professionals who have been dealing with a number of industries worldwide, and know the ins and outs of SEO for every business. We will be glad to help!
