URLs on a site. The main mistakes and how to set them up properly

To earn links to a site, you have to set up its URLsproperly. That speeds up the site's indexing, raises the number of clicks on the links and makes navigation simpler for users. 

In this article we will cover: 

• What is a URL? 

•  How do you set up the URLs on your site and which mistakes should you avoid? 

• Why does it matter that a site's URLs are set up properly?  

We advise reading and applying these recommendations even before you register a domain name and start building the site. 

What is a URL? 

A URL is the modern way of writing the addresses of files, sites and individual pages. The address starts with the network protocol. That can be http or https (a secure connection). After the network protocol come the domain and the path to the page.

A URL consists of several parts. Let us go through its structure using https://host4.bizas an example. Here we have: 

• the network protocol — https;

• the domain name — host4;

• the domain zone — biz. 

The URLs of pages also have a path — the part after the slash that points to a service page or a section of the site. For example, blog in https://host4.biz/en/blog. 

A URL can also contain a search query. An example is a link to the results of a product search in a large online shop. 

The rules for optimising URLs 

Let us go through the main rules for optimising URLs. They hold for any site — shops, business cards, portals. We will cover all of these recommendations. 

• Always add keywords to a URL. That matters especially for the domain (and the company name). The rule applies to every individual page too: its URL should contain the main high-volume query. For example, the page with towels in an online shop might have the address https://onlineshopofeverything.com/towels. Addresses written that way will please not only users but search robots as well. 

• The optimum length of an address is three to five words. Links that are too long are not shown in full in search results. As a result the share of clicks on them (CTR) goes down. 

• Avoid an overly complex structure and deeply nested pages. The more subcategories a site has, the longer the link will be. On top of that, it disperses the weight of the keywords the page is optimised for. Nesting that is too deep can confuse users and complicate navigation. 

• Separate the words in an address with hyphens. That is the best option for Google. Do without underscores in URLs. 

• Write every character in lower case. Using Caps Lock will worsen indexing. 

• We do not recommend Cyrillic domains. They artificially narrow the site's audience. There is another serious drawback: when such addresses are copied, they turn into a long string of meaningless characters. An address like that is hard to remember and looks very untidy. 

• Every page should have only one address. Watch carefully that no duplicates appear on the site. If they do, hide such addresses from indexing or use the rel=canonical attribute to specify the main page. To do that you need access to the server the site sits on and to Google Search Console. The full guide to the ways of setting a canonical URL is here, in the Google support article. If your site runs on WordPress, it can be done with one of the SEO plugins. 

• Bear in mind that a URL is part of the page too, and if a keyword is in the address and appears nine times on the page, that raises the risk of over-optimisation. Avoid it!

• URLs do not have to be written by hand. Special plugins can do it — there are dozens of them for every popular CMS. 

Conclusions  

Now you know how the structure of a URL affects the way your site works. Keep these rules in mind. Host4Biz wishes you success in promoting your business projects. We are always ready to help by providing reliable hosting for your sites and powerful servers to rent. 

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