{"id":186,"date":"2016-12-07T06:00:02","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greentreemedia:8888\/?p=186"},"modified":"2019-01-09T07:14:49","modified_gmt":"2019-01-09T12:14:49","slug":"7-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greentreemediallc.com\/7-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls\/","title":{"rendered":"7 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most often overlooked steps of creating a website page or blog post is\u00a0optimizing the URL<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

While all of the major content management systems (CMS) like WordPress give you the ability to edit the URL for each page, they will also auto-populate this field for you. Unfortunately, most of us tend to let the system do all of the work for us (and it does a predictably \u201cok\u201d job) and we miss a great opportunity to maximize our own SEO efforts.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"

Photo by Edho Pratama on Unsplash<\/p><\/div>\n

Consider this, the URL of a page is used both by search engines and humans to better understand what a\u00a0page is about, even before they visit it<\/em>.<\/p>\n

If you want to continue letting the system do the work and generate your URLs for you, that\u2019s fine \u2013 modern search engines have pretty sophisticated\u00a0algorithms they use when it comes to understanding\u00a0URLs and you\u2019ll probably<\/em> get by.<\/p>\n

However, if you really want to maximize your SEO efforts and get the most bang for your buck, you can spend an extra few seconds implementing these 7 tips to optimize your URLs and take your website to the next level.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/strong>: before I get into the 7 best practices for structuring URLs, it\u2019s important to note that you should apply these techniques moving forward with new pages and posts. I do not recommend you go back and change existing URLs on your website, especially if you have promoted those pages or shared them on social media, etc, just leave those as they are. Changing a page URL is like changing a phone number \u2013 people calling the old number won\u2019t reach the new number.<\/em><\/p>\n

In case that metaphor is confusing because I\u2019m not always great with metaphors, I\u2019m saying if someone tries to use the old URL after you change it they\u2019ll get an error page. If you\u2019re not experienced with writing 301 redirects to overcome this, don\u2019t change existing page URLs.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Ok, moving on!<\/p>\n

Use keywords at the beginning, not the end<\/h2>\n

When search engines evaluate URLs, the first 3-5 words in a URL are given more weight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you look at the title and URL of this post, you\u2019ll notice I wrote it a very specific way. It says \u201c7 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs\u201d because I want to rank for SEO Best Practices, which is really the parent topic of structuring URLs.<\/p>\n

I could have just as easily written “7 Best Practices for Structuring\u00a0URLs.” While this might look ok, the only target keyword found in it is \u201cstructuring URLs\u201d and it\u2019s at the end, which means it doesn\u2019t receive as much weight as words I don\u2019t really even care about.<\/p>\n

Keep URLs short<\/h2>\n

Shorter URLs tend to perform better than longer URLs. This doesn\u2019t have as much to do with the search engines as it has to do with the people actively clicking on and sharing your links.<\/p>\n

URLs that are short, sweet and descriptive make people feel more at ease clicking and sharing them. Consider the following URLs:<\/p>\n