Top 10 Essentials Tips in Making SEO-Friendly URL’s

URL or Uniform Resource Locator is the link to any page of a site. When placed on the Address Bar of any browser, it can also refer to the website address of a particular document on the web. URL can also be a reflection of how all the documents of a particular website are being named and organized. The following are useful tips in bringing out effective search engine optimization ( SEO ) campaign through URL element structure:

1. When creating a new page or folder in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, they usually have default naming schemes like “Untitled” or “New Page” and “Folder#”. Make sure to rename documents and folders with the topic associated with them.


2. Name folders as general topic categories and documents as topic-specific and keyword-rich.


3. There is the rule of the thumb for naming URL and it’s KISS ( Keep It Short and Simple ). But make sure that URL is concise enough to convey what it is all about or at least highly related to the actual content of the page.


4. Avoid long and cryptic URL's. Do not apply keyword stuffing.


5. Avoid session ID's for naming URL created by a special program code.


6. Avoid deep-nesting folders for all your web documents. At most second level folder is preferable.


7. Provide one and only one version of URL to access a document. Use 301 Redirect whenever another URL is linked to the same page of the site. Check also if the redirect is search engine friendly.


8. www and non-www URL versions can be treated independently by search engines although they both deliver a traffic either way. Settle for the official version and use redirect to refer www URL version to non-www URL version or vice versa.


9. Make it a practice to use lowercase in any character of the URL.


10. Separate each word in the URL by either dash ( - ) or underscore ( _ ).