SEO and URL Structure

Search Engine Optimization and URL Structure

The address of your site is important, for both users and search engines.

Search engines will read ‘-’ between words as a seperation of the words. Instead of using ‘_’ or other characters, format your pages like website-name.com instead of website_name.com. Characters other than _ will not be parsed correctly with search engines.

Depending on how your website is set up, be it pure HTML or WordPress you may have to do some work on your addresses. WordPress by default will list your posts and pages as p?id=##. Change WordPress permalinks structure and utilize %post-name%. This will make a big difference across all your sites, especially if you write posts.

If using HTML, mimic the site.com/category/post.html format. Keep it simple, and short.

Google versus Yahoo

Through experimentation I have found that Google prefers longer, more descriptive addresses. For example site.com/category-name/sub-category/product-name. In contrast, Yahoo would rather your addresses be shorter, such as site.com/product-name.

This doesn’t necessary mean you’ll not rank on either or with a longer or shorter set of addresses, but without considerable linking your site will tend to lean toward one or the other depending on your linking structure.