Optimise URLs for Search

When getting traffic to your website, organic search on the SERPS is:

• Consistent
• Long-term

Your website can control and benefit from on-page optimisation.

But not other SEO factors like:

• Your competitors
• What your competitors are doing

Your web pages and posts can benefit by optimising the URL slugs.

And it’s an on-page practice that hasn’t changed in awhile.

What is a URL slug?

A URL slug is part of the URL with the individual web page’s address.

The URL slug is at the end of the main URL after:

• The domain
• Any subdirectories, if applicable

Shown in the example below:

• www.yourwebsite.co.uk/yourcategory/the-URL-slug
• www.yourwebsite.co.uk/the-URL-slug

A URL slug helps direct visitors to the right page on your website.

URL Slug Example

An example of a URL could be:

• https://blog.yourwebsite.co.uk/yourcategory/your-article-or-post

Parts of this URL include: 

• Protocol: https
• Subdomain: blog.
• Domain: yourwebsite.co.uk
• Subdirectory: yourcategory
• URL Slug: your-article-or-post

The minimum a URL has is the protocol and the domain.

Depending on the web page and its location on your website, other parts are added to the URL.

In the example above, the subdomain and subdirectory tells the visitor where they are on the blog.

Then, the slug tells visitors what they are going to read about in the topic category.

Doing this:

• Helps search engines
• Helps visitors
• Doesn’t look like spam

URL Slug Best Practices

• Keep it simple
• Remove extra words
• Include relevant keywords
• Don’t keyword stuff
• Make it reader-friendly
• Use hyphens to separate words
• Don’t repeat slugs belonging to other pages
• Don’t use dynamically generated URLs
• Standardise your URL naming

Keep it simple

A website’s URL should be structured to be as simple as possible.

And this is according to Google.

Also, shorter URLs are easier to remember if your website visitors want to return to your content without bookmarking. 

Remove extra words

Remove words with little or no meaning to the URL.

For example, words like:

• And
• That

Removing these types of words can improve your website visitors’ readability.

Make sure your URL is readable so your website visitors:

• Understand the web page’s content
• Feel they can trust the website

Basically, you want your URLs to explain what your website visitors get from the post.

Add relevant keywords

Search engines and visitors learn about your web page’s contents through keywords in the URL.

So, add keywords in your URL slug that relate to the content of the page. 

Note: You can even optimise your URLs with long-tail search terms.

Don’t keyword stuff

Your articles can have a number of different keywords, but don’t add them all in the URL.

Don’t keyword stuff your:

• Content
• Titles
• URLs

Because:

• Its an outdated tactic
• Hurts your SEO
• Negatively affects user’s experiences on your website

Instead, pick a single keyword for the URL and let web page’s content do the rest of the work.

Make it reader-friendly

Search engines and visitors should know your web page’s content by looking at your URL.

Meanign your URL should make sense after:

• Adding keywords
• Deleting extra words

Use hyphens to separate words

Use hyphens between the words in your URL slug for better readability.

Don’t:

• Use underscores
• Squash words together

Don’t use slugs belonging to other pages

Your web pages address address should be unique. 

Dont use:

• Similar slugs
• Duplicate slugs

Because this can:

• Result in errors
• Search engines like Google seeing pages as duplicates
• Hurt your SEO performance

Note: Updats youe CMS settings so this doesnt happen accidentally.

Don’t use dynamically generated URLs

A dynamic URL has parameters automatically generated when the web page is loaded.

This is unlike a static URL which is consistent whenever accessed. 

Dynamic URLs can:

• Cause crawling issues
• Result in poor performance

Standardise your URL naming

You should have a standard process for naming URLs, applied to the pages and posts you create.

This help:

• Keep your website consistent
• Makes navigation simple
• Makes your website’s visitors experience easier

Conclusion

URLs are an important part of on-page SEO

And one of the things to think about when building your website’s foundation.

So, use best practices for URL slugs mentioned above.

Also, optimise your web pages using more SEO guidelines.

This helps increase your website’s visibility on search engines like Google.