Improving Your URLs for Better SEO
The simplicity and directness of your website’s name is crucial if you want people to be able to locate you on the Internet. This is where improving your URLs for better SEO comes in. You need to make sure you don’t create a URL that a search will actually assume is spam.
Important keywords within a URL will improve the SEO. It can help visitors find exactly what they’re looking for as well as seeing that the keyword corresponds to the information on the page they have landed on. The search engines will also know exactly what the page is about. For instance: website.com/article/63245 is not as precise as website.com/article/lightbulbs.
Another thing to keep in mind when improving your URLs for better SEO is to keep the names shorter rather than longer. We live in a society that wants everything done quicker and quicker. Keeping the URL name down to 115 characters or less fits into what is expected. For instance: website.com/pageduplicateharrynarry.isalongname?=articles/63245 is not something someone wants to type out when it can be kept down to our previous example. As you can see, the longer URL looks very much like spam not only to the human eye, but also to the search engine’s eye.
Not only that, but this long example of a URL also shows how parameters can be used or misused. One good parameter placed correctly placed can work wonders for your URL. For instance: website.com/page?source=thisone shows a parameter follows the ? or & signs. Too many of these signs in a URL will send search engines into permanent loops. If there are too many loops, your URL could possible make the site crash.
The difference between using a hyphen and an underscore in a URL seems trivial to us humans. However, a hyphen is considered a space by search engines whereas an underscore is considered a character. In other words, something like hotel _one in seen by search engines as hotelone. But, hotel-one is seen as “hotel one”.
When improving your URLs for better SEO it is important to keep the hierarchy of the site in a logical order. The most important sub-categories or sub-folders need to be at the top of the hierarchy. With your hotel website you should have all you room information prior to the extras such as a fitness center and business center in the sub-folder hierarchy. Think as if you are the customer. What is the most important thing to them? Why are they visiting your site? Anything you wish to list that doesn’t answer these to questions would be deeper into the site.
When improving your URLs for better SEO keep in mind your budget as well. If it’s going to confuse your current customers or put a big dent into your budget, it’s possible that keeping your URLs as is would be the better route to take. If you keep everything simple, be direct in your naming and don’t overkill whilst having in mind how a customer would try to locate you and use your site, you should be successful.
