No Comments Written by Robert on August 17, 2008 – 8:51 pm

Structure URLs Correctly

Structuring your URLs correctly is a critical step when developing a search-engine optimization plan of attack. Both the search engines and search-engine users appreciate static-looking, descriptive URLs. From a mechanical standpoint, they are easily spidered, and from a user’s standpoint, they are easily understood. The search engines also take into consideration the keywords and phrases contained within your URLs and use these to influence your rankings.

Properly designed URLs provide a solid foundation upon which to build more pages while maintaining an efficient organizational structure. Make a strong effort to create your URLs correctly the first time through because changing URLs later can be a daunting task.

Structure URLs correctly and you may see an increase in both your rankings as well as the percentage of people who click your link, called your click-through rate. Search-engine marketers have long recommended inserting relevant keywords into page URLs, and although the positive effects of this may not be as prevalent today as they were in the past, you will want to structure your URLs in an organized, hierarchal manner. Both search engines and search-engine users alike take URL structure into consideration when they make decisions about your Web site’s relevancy and authority.

You should organize your Web site into themes or categories that contain individual Web pages full of content relevant to the parent theme. Regardless of whether your site is an information portal or an electronic commerce platform selling thousands of products, the same best practices apply. Think of your Web site as being broken down into containers full of related information. Each container should be labeled appropriately with a URL.

Structuring your URLs correctly is a critical

Your Web site’s baseball section should be located at www.example. com/baseball, and your Web site’s football section should be located at www.example.com/football. Individual pages about baseball topics should be placed within their respective containers. Suppose you created a page about your favorite baseball player, Manny Ramirez. Place his page at www.example.com/baseball/manny-ramirez.html.

Structure your page URLs in this manner, and you create an easily spidered, organized, user-friendly Web site navigation system. The search engines can easily find each content-rich page and relate it back to its parent category. Search-engine users prefer clean, well-structured URLs when searching for a page. If searching for a page about Manny Ramirez, a large majority of search-engine users would be more inclined to click a URL like www. example.com/baseball/manny-ramirez.html versus www.example.com/player1.html.

Structuring your URLs correctly provides you with benefits beyond just improving your search-engine optimization efforts. Well-structured URLs provide you with a blueprint for creating other advertising campaigns. A paid search, or pay-per-click, advertising campaign involves purchasing advertising space directly on search engines when users search for particular keywords relevant to your products or content. A properly categorized Web site gives you a head start in developing the keyword lists necessary to properly construct a paid search advertising campaign.

Search engines like Google incentivize Web sites that partake in proper search-engine optimization techniques in both their organic rankings as well as in their paid search rankings. For that reason, you should properly construct your URLs for reasons beyond just an increase in the organic rankings. You may actually see a price decrease in your paid search efforts as well.