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What Is A URL

  • Felix Rose-Collins
  • 2 min read
What Is A URL

Intro

A URL is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. Uniform resource identifier identifies the resources that are available and the mechanisms that will retrieve it. URL is the human readable content that is used to replace the IP address used by computers to communication to servers. URLs should use hyphens to separate words where necessary to promote readability because overuse of hyphens can alert Google’s spam alerts. URLs should not be longer than 2048 character or they will not load properly into Internet Explorer. Try to avoid the use of parameters, but if they are absolutely necessary, then limit them to two. SEO friendly URLs should be three things, straight forward, meaningful, and focused.

Straightforward

URLs should be organized and void of confusing redirects on the site. If any of the URLs have duplicated content, then canonical URLs should be in place to clean up the errors.

Meaningful

The names for the URLs should include keywords that make sense and not be comprised of nonsensical numbers and punctuation marks.

Focused

As far as SEO Friendly URLs are concerned, not all names are created equal. Some pages need to be hidden from search engines if they are not helpful to the site. Pages that should be accessible to bots should be made complete available for indexing and easily located. There should be a focused strategy for the SEO plan for the site.

Top SEO Tactics: URLs

URLs are descriptive tools that give visitors to a site an idea of what they will find on the indexed pages. The key to a successful and well ranking URLs is to keep them relevant and compelling. Web document URLs should be as brief and descriptive as possible. For example, the structure of a site should have levels of navigation and files with URLs that reflect this organization with folders and subfolders. It is beneficial and necessary for adept search engine optimization to keep URL names brief. Search engineers have suggested that URLs with more than two parameters could risk not getting crawled by search engine bots. Basically, URLs need to be descriptive without being overly so. A visitor should be able to see the URL should have an idea of that the page is about.

The Main Benefits of URLS

Semantics

an appropriately written URL should make sense semantically. It should be easy for human readers and search engine bots to locate the subject of the URL by quickly examining it.

Relevancy

like title tags, a well-written URL should benefit from keyword layering that can be used to determine relevancy and rankings. The benefit of a properly worded URL is that it is more likely to receive additional traffic because of keywords in the URL.

URLs also benefit from additionally functioning as anchor text when used on a site like an external link.

URLs add relevancy to web pages and are important to the structure of search engines and how they operate. URLs and anchor text serve a similar function from a marketing and advertising standpoint for the popularity of the associated site. Users are more interested in engagement with URLs that have relevant keywords that mirror website content and is enticing to users from SERP listings.

The words in a URL impact the relevancy of the associated pages because the phrases or keywords will be compared and analyzed with the content of the site in search of overlapping context. Many of the factors in SEO are directly impactful to the end ranking results. URLs aren’t of immediate impact to the popularity and ranking of a website. URLs are important to a site because of its impact on user experience, relevancy, and social media marketing.

Having a page shared creates momentum for a page that will ultimately impact the credibility and trustworthiness of a site.

Felix Rose-Collins

Felix Rose-Collins

Ranktracker's CEO/CMO & Co-founder

Felix Rose-Collins is the Co-founder and CEO/CMO of Ranktracker. With over 15 years of SEO experience, he has single-handedly scaled the Ranktracker site to over 500,000 monthly visits, with 390,000 of these stemming from organic searches each month.

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