The clearer your URL is for the readers, the easier it turns for indexing and organic search. This is a way too common advice that is still overlooked by some; accessibility is an important part of SEO. The higher motive of SEO is not a clean URL but one that is easily understood and comprehended by the readers or audience.

As an add-on, an easily readable URL has higher chances getting a click on Google’s organic search results, effectively boosting your CTR (Click Through Rate).

Study shows, shifting content to sub-folder on the main domain from the sub-domain helps improve search results. Search engines don’t always rank sub-domains. Setting up a rich and quality blog will bring your site great value as it increases the chances of better rankings and acts as a support for the other website content performance when it is all on one domain.

To use your target keywords in the URLs is a brilliant idea. Keywords allow search engines know your page better and help the viewers searching you through social networks or emails. Remember, not to repeat the keywords making the URL artificial. DO it wherever you see an opportunity but not at the stake of misleading your potential searchers.

How to use keywords in your URLs correctly?

More often, URLs are copied and pasted. If there’s no anchor text in your link, the URL itself serves for it. This clearly indicates that when you use a keyword in your URLs, it automatically becomes a part of the anchor text of the links pointing at your website.

The anchor text is the key source for the search engines to identify what is your site about.

Using URLs in SERPs

Do some close research on your target keywords in the URLs using keyword explorer. You will find a myriad of research tools available for free, which you can use to get the most relevant and searched keyword that you can insert in the URLs.

Keeping URLs shorter is always the first recommendation from a PRO. Make sure you don’t take it as a compulsion. Never sacrifice accessibility and understanding just to cut it down short. The standard URL length is somewhere between 40 to 60 characters. The good part is, lengthy URLs are no obligations from search engines. Instead, they process them faster. The problem lies with user readability or what we call it user experience. Research shows short URLs are easy-to-read, copy and paste.

It is not at all mandate to use stop words like but, the, of, or, a, and, etc., in tour URLs. It is better to skip these as now the URL turns shorter and easier to comprehend by the searchers. You should gain good knowledge about deciding and trying to balance a combination of easy-to-read URLs and shorter URLs.

When structuring URLs for a page, try to match it with the title, at least manage to have common signs to give the searcher an idea about your page just by reading the URL.

Consider an example; search engines have become smarter enough to know your article has something about cars seeing the term ‘automobile’, ‘SUV,’ etc., in your URL.

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Using punctuation, characters, unknown text or even symbol will have a negative impact on your site. Would you want a single comma to bring down your SEO rankings? I know, you don’t. So, it is always suggested to control or remove the usage of such specific characters in your URLs.

Commonly, the home page is the most authoritative or significant page of your website. Why? It is the page having a maximum number of links on your website. I hope you were aware of this. If not, now you know!

This implies the blogs and articles closer to the home page are viewed as authoritative ignoring the ones far away from the main page (homepage).

Folders or slashes show the search engines the distance at which your article is from the root domain. As such, avoid using too many folders into your URLs and save your page’s authority as well. It ultimately keeps your URL shorter and easy to read.

You can use hashes to direct your users to a specific page or comment. It is advised to use hashes with a purpose to track and to offer parameters. Using them without any such motive or idea in mind is proved to be useless.