Structuring Simple URLs to gain Better SEO rankings, but how to do it?

Is it even possible that someone can envisage such an approach? Well, they should start from now on if they want their website to score better. Various tactics are adopted; numerous tips are offered to please search engines, to earn better SEO rankings. Each time a new approach is found, it has not failed to raise eyebrows in the SEO industry.

An insight: Benefits of better URL Readability

URL structure now is considered as one of the main optimization techniques for acquiring favorable rankings. A simple example can shed some light on this concept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/web-development

http://www.solutions.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f730f1

If we observe both the cases, the former link has a user-friendly structure which can be easily understood by visitors, while the latter fails to provide the same. Not only the users, but even Google bot may find it difficult to crawl and index such links which may consume more bandwidth.

Things to Consider

Special characters, numbers, codes and IDs are to be blamed; not only they are confusing but can create a baffling experience. Keep it simple, says Google, also it stresses that hyphens should be used as a word separator rather than an underscore as it sometimes differs the complete definition of a word. An example is set below to have a better understanding,

• com/P1-P2: Under this example, for Google it considers P1 and P2 as two different subjects which is actually correct.
• com/P1_P2: Here, Google recognizes P1 and P2 as two separate entities which can sometimes be inappropriate.

Hence, we can deduce that for Google a hyphen is a word separator while an underscore is a word joiner.

The Length factor: The length needs an obvious attention once we go through this recent stat. The websites which ranked within the top 10 numbers had an average of just 37 characters, hence adding domain names or stuffing keywords can be a bad option.

URLs were created in place of IP addresses so that users would better understand the communication path. But, if filled with complex parameters or characters then the whole idea of simplification will have no meaning.

Subfolders– Protocol and domain name are the two common elements of an URL. http://www.example.com, where http is the protocol and www.example.com is the domain name, any category after these are known as subfolders. http://www.example.com/blog, here, the element blog is the subfolder. Even though subfolders do not directly influence SEO rankings, URLs with lesser number or no subfolders are most preferred.

The Bottom Line

TinyURL or Bit.ly services are out there which can effectively shorten the length of an URL. Also, it does not hurt if you add one or two relevant keywords to the URLs as it can greatly contribute during crawling and indexing. But stuffing keywords is a complete no no. Why? Not only they drive off web crawlers, but can also be penalized for duplication.