What you need to know about optimizing URLs for SEO? This article outlines all the elements to know.
The stability of the URL , the most important criterion
Will not change the URL of your pages will only add keywords especially if your listing is already working well like that. For new sections of your site or a new site , include keywords from the start. For an ancient site , wait for the day when you will need to do a major overhaul to integrate this kind of optimization.
Presence of keyword in the URL
First, I prefer to be clear: the URL is far from being the main element to optimize the ranking of a page . Before you ask whether to put keywords in the URL , include them in your content, your title tag (and your description).
It is preferable to use strategic keywords in the URL , rather than numbers or elements meaningless . In fact, as I showed in a test published on WRI engines take into account the presence of keywords in the URL. By cons , do not expect miracles with this optimization , this criterion is not taken into account. In summary : if you can , use words that make sense in your URL.
For that matter , avoid using certain words in the URL providing too little sense ( for example items ) . But in some cases it is necessary to keep (either because they are important in terms of SEO as in La Rochelle or the article is important is to make understandable URL) .
Word separators in URLs
To properly separate words in URLs , use characters interpreted as delimiters by the search engines. The space is recommended , better use the hyphen , comma , through the bar (/) or the vertical bar , but not the underscore . Be careful though with the point that in some cases problematic.
Do not be fooled by bolding certain words or phrases in the search results pages of Google, management and display of results ranking algorithm results are two separate processes. At a time ( around 2006 ) , Bing ( MSN Search at the time) rarely indexait pages whose URL contained more than two dashes. the situation seems to have improved since then.
URL length
The length is not a problem for engines that index very long URL. By cons , it is not very convenient to use , for example when a URL is copied to a forum or blog, it is often truncated to avoid distorting the display. In this case , any keywords that compose may not appear.
I am inclined to advise you to create fairly short URL.
The # sign in URL
In a URL, which follows the # sign is traditionally a named anchor , that is to say an internal bookmark the page. We sometimes known as "fragment" . This allows for a link to part of a page .
Some techs use the sign in another way ( this is particularly true of Flex ) .
Just be aware that for the search engines, everything after the # is ignored. If important parameters for displaying the content went behind the # sign , it may be a problem for your SEO. There are exceptions , however, now with Google indexing and Ajax .
Extension: . Htm or html or php or aspx or none. . . ?
What extension should you use ? To me the answer is simple : no matter your file extension ! You do not even have to use ( see the example of Wikipedia) . This is not because it ends in. Html it is an HTML document. What matters is that your page is actually coded in HTML ( if possible without too many mistakes ! ) .
multiple URLs
If a page is available in two URL (or more) , there is a risk of duplicate content ( duplicate content ) . If the same content is available in many places, the search engines are trying to determine what is called the canonical URL , that is to say, the URL of the page the most legitimate (eg the one that receives the more links ) . They then index that canonical URL , and do not index the other ( for example , Google has improved its algorithm on this since the establishment of BigDaddy ) . The problem is that it is difficult to predict what URL will be used by the engines. Also have a page accessible to multiple URLs is bad also in terms of linking strategies since optimization is scattered on multiple URLs rather than focusing on one. That is why we must be careful not to have multiple URLs for a given page.
In this regard , as indicated in the comments SuperPJ , if you use the URL Rewriting , do not forget to de-index dynamic pages with the old URL format . For this, it is best to redirect permanently ( HTTP code 301 ) each old URL to the new equivalent . If this is not possible, use the canonical URL tag or robots.txt. Otherwise , a single page will be available on two URLs that pose problems of duplicate content.
Accents , diacritical letters and other special characters
While engines like Google usually manage well the special characters in URLs , I do not recommend to use . Replace them by their unaccented equivalent , it will save you a lot of trouble .
uppercase
Some use capital letters in the URL (often with Microsoft technologies, I do not know why). Again , what is the use case ? What will happen if someone tries to access the URL without the capital that you had planned ? Sometimes it generates an error, sometimes it returns the same content as the URL with the capital (but not he generates duplicate content ? ), Sometimes there must be a 301 redirect to the uppercase version .
In short, make it simple , only use lowercase letters in your URL. It is especially to be consistent to use the same URL format .
Small bonus for AdSense
If the URL contains the keywords associated with the page, AdSense can be used to better target advertisements , especially for the very first displays when the page has been published .
However, it is obviously minor compared to the content of the page ...
If I forgot elements to consider for many URL optimize for SEO, or if some points are not accurate or more , do not hesitate to tell me in comments
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