URL Optimisation Creates SEO Friendly Websites

Feel like your website traffic or rankings have been… “sluggish”? This may be caused by unfriendly URLs on your website with no SEO qualities. URL optimisation creates SEO friendly websites by making it easier for search engines to find your website. An optimised URL will allow for better indexing with easier navigation and crawlability, creates great on-page optimisation strategies, increases functional internal link structure and makes it friendlier to read and remember! Moz explains URL anatomy in this SEO cheat sheet. 

Strategies To Optimise URLs For An SEO Website Include:

Keeping your URLs simple:

• • Don’t try and over-complicate your wording or make it too long! A good URL should not be longer than 60 characters and be easy to embed, copy and paste, or share. The more characters, the more chances of losing rankings.

Using the right keywords: 

• • By researching and using relevant keywords for your URL, you are increasing the chances for your website to be found by search engines. A great free tool for keyword research is Google Trends.

Making your URL structure easy to read:

• • Remove special characters such as brackets, commas, colons, semicolons. If you’re confused reading your own URL, chances are that a search engine will be too! A great SEO practice is to make your URL as close to your webpage title as possible, and minimising the use of folders in a URL to optimise performance. A messy URL that contains a complex mix of text and symbols may be seen as ‘untrustworthy’.

Using hyphens in URLs:

• • Hyphens replace spaces. People are more familiar with using hyphens than any other word spacer. If you end up leaving a space, it is often replaced with “%20”, which is not  SEO friendly, user-friendly or visually appealing.

Using lower case letters in URLs:

• • Some people may wonder, does URL capitalization really affect SEO? URLs are case sensitive, so it may just create issues such as duplicating content. To avoid potential duplication issues, it is recommended to keep to the traditional use of lower case letters for your URLs. Duplicated content will hurt your ranking! 

Avoid dates or numbers in URLs: 

• • By avoiding the use of dates or numbers in your URL, you are able to easily go back and edit your content without it affecting your SEO ranking. Your inbound and outbound links will not be affected and you will have a greater chance of keeping your URL healthy.

Keeping it secure:

• • Security is increasingly impacting rankings and user experience. It is essential to keep your website secure with an HTTPS encryption or Google Search may not rank it. This is acquired through an SSL certificate which helps authenticate websites and ensures your data is not compromised on your website. 

By optimising your URLs with these SEO friendly strategies, you are optimising your website for search engines to find you. This will help to boost your rankings, website traffic and brand awareness, which is why it is so important to optimise URLs for your website. Want to learn more about SEO? Our Perth SEO Agency is here to help! Keep up with our Marketing Tips by subscribing to our newsletter!