Modern SEO Page-Naming Conventions

Michael Garrity — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:15:00 GMT

Most search engine optimization (SEO) professionals spend a lot of their time optimizing the titles and descriptions of their Web pages to rank higher and attract more visitors, but many also forget to optimize another important aspect of a Web page that can affect its ranking: the URL.

As with title tags, URLs help describe a website and page to search engines and potential visitors, meaning that they should be updated (or at least checked) regularly to ensure they are relevant, accurate and enticing for users.

There are various “best practices” for URL structure that have popped up over the years, such as keeping them as short as possible, while remaining descriptive, and that they should indicate the different levels of a site’s structure by including folders and/or subfolders.

But those general tactics don’t always reflect the trends of the day, which is why we’re going to look at some modern page-naming conventions for three different query types (i.e. informational, navigational and transactional) utilized by SEO pros on the search results pages today. To do this, we’ll look at the top eight results (or seven from the navigational queries) for three different searches and for each type of query.

Informational

When it comes to informational page URLs, it is important to utilize keywords as much as possible, and to be aware of more long-tail search queries that may come up so you can include them in your URLs, as well.

top baby names
Two of the domains names in the URL for this query actually used keywords from the search, and one of them utilized the full query in the domain name (without hyphens). In addition, four (or 50 percent) of the URLs used the full keyword string, in order, somewhere in the address. Six of the results (75 percent) used hyphen to separate terms in the URL, while one of them (12.5 percent) did not separate the word at all. Five of the pages (62.5 percent) were located in folders on the site, according to the URLs, while three of them (37.5 percent) were organized by date. One of the URLs ended with a .html extension. The longest URL was 77 characters, while the shortest was just 21; the average character length was 49.

types of sushi
All eight of the URLs for this query used at least one of the search keywords; half of them used all three words, three of which (75 percent) used them all in order. Of the page names, 75 percent had the individual words separated by hyphens, while one did not separate them at all; one of the domain names even had a hyphen in it. Two, or 25 percent, of the pages were not located in any specific folders; one of the page was, while four of the URLs actually referenced pages that were located beneath multiple subfolders. Two URLs ended in a .asp extension, one in a .aspx and two others in .html extensions. The longest was 75 characters long; the shortest was 27 characters; the average was 50.9 characters.

best hip hop albums 2012
Every one of the URLs for this search used hyphens to separate different words in the page title at the end of the address. Four of these pages were located in folders on the website, as indicated by the URL, while two of those were actually in subfolders. However, two of them were actually organized by date, so where the folders were normally located in the other URLs, these pages instead had a year or specific date (e.g. /2012/08/31/). Moreover, one URL used a content ID number as a search parameter in the URL, while another one introduced the page title at the end of the address by prefacing it with “title.” before adding the name of the page. The longest URL was 91 characters long, and the shortest was 44 characters. The average for all of them was 67.5 characters.

Navigational

Navigational searches are those that are looking for something specific, so a smart brand knows that it should include its name in all of its URLs whenever possible. In addition, you should your industry’s most prominent keyword frequently. Plus, it helps to keep these address names as short and easy-to-remember as possible.

PetSmart
Five of the seven (71 percent) used this keyword somewhere in the URL, and three of them (43 percent) used it in the domain name. However, two (28.5 percent) don’t use the keyword at all. One of these pages (14 percent) is located on a subdomain, as well, while one is in a folder, and another is in a subfolder. The longest URL was 61 characters long, and the shortest was just 17. The average for all seven was 36.1 characters.

Emergency 24
Four (57 percent) of these URLs included the keywords somewhere, and three of them had it in sequence. Just one of them used it in the domain name. One page was hosted on a subdomain, and 43 percent of the pages were located in folders on the site, with one of them buried in a subfolder. In the page names, two URLs separated individual words with hyphens, but one did nothing to separate them. One page ended its address with a .html extension and another with a .asp extension. The longest URL was 65 characters, and the shortest, like PetSmart, was only 17, but the average character-length for all seven URLs was 35.

Verizon Wireless
A whopping six out of seven (or 86 percent) of these URLS used both keywords, while four of them had that exact string, including the one that used it in the domain name. Two of the pages are hosted on subdomains, while interestingly, two of them start with a “www22.” subdomain. Five of the pages (71 percent) are located in folders, with one of those being in a subfolder. In the page names, one separates different words by using both hyphens and a “+” sign, while another one actually uses underscores to distinguish different terms.

Transactional

Most of us use the Web to shop, at least on occasion, and so many of our daily searches have to do with potential transactions we’re thinking of making. For SEO pros, this means it is important to include possible keywords in a page’s URL structure, but that it is more important to organize and name your site’s folders and subfolders so that they aren’t too long and add a lot of unnecessary clutter to your URLs, because, as you’ll see, many of these URLs are already quite long. More than likely you’re going to have a lot of products that could be searched for, and you need to be able to find them easily on your server without using cumbersome folder names.

basketball hoop prices
Two sets of two pages for this keyword actually came from the same domain name (walmart.com and amazon.com, respectively). Seven of the eight pages use at least one of these keywords in the URL, including one that used “basketball” in the domain name, while two of the addresses used “basketball hoop” together. Two URLs used content IDs to indicate specific products, while one of them used a catalog ID. Six of the pages were located on subfolders. Five of them (62.5 percent) separated individual words in the page title by using hyphens. The longest URL was 107 characters long, while the shortest was 24; the average of all eight was 60.8 characters.

black office chair wheels
Two (25 percent) of these URLS did not include any of the keywords, but two had one keyword, another two had three keywords and the other two had all four keywords, including one that had them all in sequence. Seven of these pages (87.5 percent) were located in folders, and 75 percent of them were in some kind of subfolder. Six of the addresses used hyphens to separate individual words in the page titles, while four of them used product IDs to identify the unique products on each page. One URL ended with a .html extension, and another ended with a .php extension. The longest URL was a massive 123 characters, and the shortest was 39. The average length of all eight URLs was 70.3 characters.

used bookstore chicago
All eight of these URLs used at least one of the keywords from the query, and seven of those actually used all three words; three (37.5 percent) even used all of the words in sequence, and two (25 percent) used some of the keywords in the site’s domain name. Four of the pages are located in folders (one of them in a subfolder), but one of the pages is organized by date, much like with the informational queries. Four of the page names separate individual words with hyphens (although one also uses an underscore mark), but one of them uses “+” signs. One page, which is actually a site’s search results page, uses the command “search?” before including the keywords being searched for on that page. One of the pages ends with a .html extension, and other actually ends with a .story extension. The longest URL is 105 characters long, but the shortest is just 23. The average URL length for this query is 66.4 characters.

Extreme Makeover: SEO Edition

Michael Garrity — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:30:00 GMT

The winter weather is finally starting to subside, which means that spring is right around the corner and it’s a time for new beginnings. For business owners, webmasters and online marketers, this means doing a little spring cleaning the form of an SEO makeover for their websites.

Regularly performing a checkup on your website and giving it a bit of a facelift when and where it’s necessary are kind of essential to maintaining a solid SEO strategy. However, it can be easy to overlook at times and before you know it, a few weeks (or even months) have gone by since you last fixed things up, and by this time, you’re site may need a more extensive overhaul.

If your site is in dire need of a makeover and you’re wondering where to begin, look no further, because below we’ve listed a handful of nips, tucks and alterations that can help you totally reimagine your website for SEO.

Dust Off the Old Keyword Research Tool
Keyword research is the backbone of any SEO strategy, but it is also one of the easiest things to forget to revisit when turning up your site. That’s why the first step in an SEO makeover should be visiting the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to find the keywords in your niche that are not only most popular, but are also most suitable to your particular Web business. If this new report returns information about new keywords that you’re not currently using, make sure to find a way to work them into your site’s title tags and meta descriptions.

Clean Up URLs
One of the easiest and yet most effective ways to improve your website’s search rankings is by beautifying your URLs to make them easier for search engines to read, which means getting rid of long query strings. Clean, easy-to-understand URLs should include a hypertext transfer protocol, the website’s domain name, the subdirectory of the file or page (if applicable) and the file name of the requested resource, all of which are separated by backslashes. Moreover, different terms within directory or file names should be separated by dashes (-), rather than underscores (_); the URL should not include auto-generated IDs and/or numbers; and they should remain as short as possible. Luckily, there is a tool that helps users rewrite requested URLs on the fly called mod_rewrite.

Refine the Site Architecture
This is the big one, as refining your site’s architecture not only makes it easier for search engines to crawl your content, but it also makes the site more user friendly and increases load times, so it’s a great idea all around. For starters, you should make sure the site follows the basic rule of thumb that it takes no more than three clicks to reach your deepest content. Other handy little tweaks you can make include making it possible to access your homepage in one click from any other page on your site (which could include placing a link your logo image), cross-linking related pages to open the navigation flow (for both users and search engines) and by utilizing text-based links for your menu and page navigation buttons, since that’s the only thing that search engine crawlers can read, which is particularly important for the more crucial aspects of your website.

Purge Your Link Collection
If you like back to all of the websites that link to you, that tells Google that all of your inbound links are not earned, as sites with real authority don’t have to practice link sharing. You may also have a list of outbound or internal links on your site that go to broken pages, downed websites or other places that you may not want them going to various reasons. An SEO makeover is the perfect opportunity to perform a full-scale link checkup on your website to make sure that your site provides only the best and most necessary links for visitors and search engines. Remember, the number of outbound links you have doesn’t matter, as long as you’re linking to authoritative (and working) sites.

Weed Out Irrelevant Content
Finally, you should also do a site-wide examination of all of your content to ensure relevance and quality and help you move up the search rankings, as better content means more visitors and links and, thus, more attention from Google and Bing. Review your blog posts, Web pages and other copy to suss out anything irrelevant or outdated and make changes as necessary. This includes (but is not limited to) updating titles and headlines to include keywords and adding links to trending topics, which can help you get more relevant content and increase your search engine placement.

'Net Features : URLs

Modern SEO Page-Naming Conventions

Informational

Navigational

Transactional

Extreme Makeover: SEO Edition