Using SEO Friendly URLs

You can optimize the URL (or address of your webpage) by keeping it short and including your target keywords.

A good example of an SEO-friendly URL looks like this:

example.com/tampa-fl-roofing-repair/

As you can see, the target keywords are in the actual address, and both a user and a search engine could tell that this page is about roofing repair in Tampa, FL.

In contrast to the example above, an “ugly” URL often contains numbers or extra characters that do not describe the page. A non-SEO-friendly URL might look something like this:

example.com/38892302/ab20093-3992/

The numbers are extraneous, they elongate the URL unnecessarily, and they do not help a user or a search engine understand the page.

Using Short Urls

Google’s former head of search quality, Matt Cutts, stated in an interview that it’s important to keep URLs short:

(Image Source)

According to Cutts, an SEO-friendly URL is around 4-5 words, with the algorithm giving less weight to keywords added in after the 5th word.

In other words, keep your URLs short and sweet, and use keywords near the front.

How To Create SEO Friendly URLs

Non-SEO friendly URLs are often created as a result of the CMS that a website runs on.

For instance in WordPress, when creating posts and pages, you can edit the URL by clicking “Edit” button next to the URL on the page.

For the blog in WordPress, you can set the default taxonomy (URL structure) by going to Settings > Permalinks and choosing an option like “Post name” as a default.

By using your keywords in the URL of your pages, you’ll create easy to read SEO-friendly URLs!

Conclusion

By optimizing your URLs, you not only tell users what your site content is about, but you’re telling search engines like Google how relevant and valuable your content is.

When bots crawl your site, they’ll be able to help you rank better based solely on your URL structure.