Search Engine Optimization Guide for beginners – URL Structure

Continuing the series on Search Engine Optimization guide for beginners, in this article we will explain how proper URL structure can improve the site's chances of ranking higher in Google and other search engines.

By creating descriptive categories and filenames for the web pages of your website, you not only keep the site better organized and systematic, but it can also benefit you in terms of good rankings on Google for your keywords. Since the search engine bots can easily crawl your organized website, search engines will be able to glean much more information from your site. Webmaster can also create search engine friendly URLs. These URLs are not only more legible and easier to understand, but also are better for those who want to place your webpage link on their website. Long and cryptic page names may put off or scare visitors. Page names (URLs) like these can be confusing and intimidating and don't serve any purpose. Such URLS are difficult to remember. A small % of users always try to go a particular website by recalling its name. But in these scenarios, your URL may elude his/her memory. Many times these long URLs are shortened due to ignorance of a user or shortage of space like in twitter where the number of characters that can be entered is limited. In these cases, the link is broken. Sometimes, the URL itself is used as anchor text, if the URL contains relevant keywords, it will assist user and search engine bots in determining the true nature and substance of the web page. This is much better than an unintelligible URL with loads of parameters which does not help in any way in improving your rankings.

Also, in search engine search results pages, just below the webpage's title and description snippet, the URL to the webpage is provided. And if the search query matches the words in the URL, then those words appear in bold. This immediately signals to the user making the search that this page is relevant.

Webmaster should avoid URLs with unnecessary session IDs and parameters. While adding keywords to URL is a good idea, don't go overboard with it. A simple and intuitive directory structure also helps bots. Avoid deep nested subdirectories and also keep name of the directories relevant.

Search Engines are getting sophisticated with each passing days and unlike in earlier days, they can now crawl pages with any kind of URL structure – simple or complex. But it's in webmaster's interest to keep the URL as simple and relevant as possible. Few minutes and bit of care in selecting and making search engine friendly URL can help both users and search engines in long run. This can also be done using URL rewriting technique in case of dynamically generated web pages.

Adhering to above mentioned guidelines can benefit any webmaster in more than one way. User Interaction ease as well as benefits from better rankings makes these suggestions important in today's highly competitive business scenario. So be wise.

Author: Aniruddha Badola