SEO URL Optimization

The URL is the name of your webpage as it is displayed in the browser’s address bar. There are several best practices related to URL construction that can really help your website rank higher in the organic search results.

Here are a couple of examples of bad URLs.
Let’s take a closer look and figure out how to do some URL optimization.
www.mysite.com/products/012456789   
www.mysite.com/articles/this_is_my_articles 

A URL with a bunch of numbers is not helpful to anybody. Make sure the URLs have meaning to humans AND search engines.

The dash is the only character that is universally recognized as as space. Use a dash to separate words rather than underscores or plus signs.

The URL is a great place to highlight your keyword phrase. This helps the search engine (and your visitor) understand what the page is all about.

Here are some additional things to keep in mind when constructing URLs:

• Don’t use query strings. Rather, use session variables, which don’t show up in the URL.
• Static (vs. dynamic) URLs are best.
• Make sure each page has only one unique URL. Be careful with content management systems that try to create all sorts of archives, which creates duplicate content.
• Short URLs are preferable.
• Please note that if you are going to change existing URLs, you need to 301 redirect your old URL to your new URL so you don’t lose traffic.