The URL is something basic in any field of online marketing, but do we really know what a URL is, where it comes from and good practices at the SEO level?
All content on the web must have a single URL (Uniform Resource Locator) to avoid any type of problem with search engines, it is one of the basic pillars of anything that has to do with the Internet, but do we really know what? what is a url?
What is a URL
A URL is the text version to replace IP addresses so that it is both human and computer readable to communicate with servers.
In 1995, Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, implemented the standard for URLs (which would later be renamed URLs), today it is estimated that there are more than 100 billion web pages using the URL standard. .
Anatomy of a URL
A basic URL is compulsorily composed of 4 parts that are the ones that will govern the rest of the URLs of a web page:
- Protocol: There are two types of basic protocols:
- http: It is the basic protocol by which the vast majority of pages on WWW servers are governed
- https: It is the protocol, let’s say, of security. This type of protocol is used to protect user data such as credit card numbers or personal data.
- Subdomain: A subdomain is a third level domain that depends on the main domain. You can create all the subdomains you want without any type of restriction, but the most common are:
- www.example.com (www is the subdomain)
- example.com (has no subdomain)
- Domain: It is the main level of a website, if the domain is free it can be registered
- TLD: It is the extension that accompanies the domain
- Sub-folders: As the name suggests, they are folders that are within a domain or subdomain
- Page: It could be said that it is the last level of a URL, where the final content is located
- #TOP: It is used to show different versions or options of the same page or at a navigational level within the same page. Google does not take into account when indexing what is to the right of the hash mark (#)
According to a study by MOZ, at the SEO level this is the priority of the parts of a URL:
- Domain
- Subdomain
- Subfolder
- Page
Good SEO practices with the URL
As in any aspect that has the least influence on SEO, it is optimizable.
Containing the keyword
Although in principle it is something that no longer influences the positioning, I personally doubt it given the number of pages of dubious quality that rank very well for very competitive terms simply because they have “exact match domain”.
That is why it is advisable to include a domain in which your main keyword appears, as long as it seems natural and does not lead to user mistrust. These two examples are overly SEO-oriented domains:
www.compraripadbarato.com- www.conseguirdinerorapido.com
But in a URL the entire domain is not the same, also in the rest of the URL of a page the keyword for which it is intended to position that page must appear, with the same advice: do not abuse the keywords, if not Google you can treat it as keyword stuffing.
The shorter the better
In principle there is no limit to the length of a URL, but it is recommended that it be short for two reasons:
- A short URL will be much easier for the user to read and understand than a long one.
- The positioning capacity of a word in a URL is lower the further to the right of the URL it is and the more words the URL has
For this reason you have to eliminate everything that is not necessary in a URL, that is, articles and prepositions of the URL, for example, if the URL is “How to improve the SEO of your blog” the URL should stay in “as- improve-seo-blog “
Use hyphens
Whenever you want to separate words in a URL you have to use hyphens (-) and try to avoid types of separators such as under bars and the + symbol:
- BAD: www.example.com/data_of_a_product.html
- BAD: www.example.com/data+of+a+product.html
- OK: www.example.com/product-card/
Sub-domains Vs Sub-folders
There is a lot of discussion about what is better at the SEO level: it depends on what you are looking for, one or the other will be more optimal. Let’s take the example of a blog within a website:
If what you want is to get links, mentions and relevance to the blog that directly influences the SEO of your website, the best option is to create it in a subfolder, since this will pass a large part of the link juice and authority to the upper domain.
If, on the contrary, you want what happens on your blog to have no influence on the web, either for fear of a penalty or because the web is oriented to more than one country, choose a subdomain.
Avoid strange characters
Any non-English alphabet character is not welcome in a URL, that is, eñes, accents, or question marks. The best thing is to use only letters and numbers within the English alphabet.
Canonicalization of URLs
This is something that occurs in a large part of web pages and is the most common reason for duplicate content, it occurs when a page has more than one URL , let’s take the example of a home page:
- example.com
- www.example.com
- example.com/index.html
- www.example.com/index.html
Each of the above leads to the same page with the same content, having them without any redirection means that the search engine does not know which one you want to direct people to.
Three solutions could be applied:
- Do a redirect on the server to make sure there is only one page showing to users
- Add a canonical tag in all versions of the URL pointed to the main one
- Define which subdomain you want to be the main one (“www” or “non-www”) in Google Webmaster Tools
Avoid parameters
The parameters in a URL must be avoided as it is very difficult since in an e-commerce it is often necessary to differentiate between different versions of the same product or to order a series of products.
There are many types of parameters, especially in e-commerce : product filters (color, size, score, etc.), ordering (lower price, by relevance, higher price, in grid, etc.) and user sessions. The problem, in addition to the loss of positioning when increasing the length of it, is that many of these parameters do not change the content of the page , that causes there to be many URLs for the same content.
- www.example.com/dresses?color=blue&price-from=30&price-up=50
In this example we can see three parameters: color, low price and high price.
The solution is to tell Google through Google Webmaster Tools > Tracking> URL parameters which parameters to ignore when indexing pages on your website.
Another solution for any problem with the parameters is to add a rel = canonical tag to the original page, simply with this you can avoid any type of confusion on the part of Google with the original page.
HTTP response code
Although it is not directly related to the optimization of a URL, I find it very interesting to know what the response codes that return these mean to us. These are the most common:
- 200: Everything is fine, let’s keep calm
- 301: The page has been permanently redirected to another page. These types of redirects pass all the link juice and relevance from the old page to the new one.
- 302: The page has been temporarily redirected to another page
- 404: CHAOS !! The page has been removed or is not available at this time.
- 502: There is a server error, neither users nor search engines can access the page
- 503: Temporarily out of service, informs users and search engines to come back later. It is the best option when it comes to maintenance and it is good at the SEO level
How to know the response code of a page?
I use two tools to view the response code of a page:
When it comes to knowing the response code of all the pages of a website, it is the fastest and most effective. You just have to enter the URL at the top and click on start.
Redirect Path for chrome
This plug-in for Chrome is the fastest way to know the response code of a page. When you enter a page, it will tell you immediately if there is some kind of error or any redirect.
As a gift I leave you this MOZ infographic that summarizes very well the most common response codes and the differences between them:
