Do Your URLs Stink?

They do if they look like line noise

By WebProNews Staff · July 3, 2008 · 9 Comments

Formatting URLs properly for SEO purposes shouldn’t be something beyond the capabilities of your website.

Site publishers want to be found by searchers. Poor URL construction could get in the way of this happy result, however.

SEO 2.0 showed a bunch of URL design mistakes that could be the difference between people discovering your site in search, and not finding it while it dies slowly from lack of traffic and conversion opportunities.

Long strings of letters and numbers, special characters, content management system-generated strings, and date based URLs may be efficient for site operation, but they’re a double-tall drink of arrow frog poison for SEO.

Fortunately, SEO 2.0 provided a nice top ten list of URL design rules that should help the traffic-seeking webmaster pull in those visits. The main idea: keep it simple and readable by humans and machines.

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There are 9 Comments. Add Yours.

seo boston
July 16, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Reply

Great article Jason, URL structure is not on the top of the list for onsite optimization it definitly helps with inbound links for keywords when the url is the only thing used, or when your site gets scraped.
- seo boston
  July 16, 2008 at 3:57 pm
  Reply
  
  I mean David.
Guest
July 13, 2008 at 1:18 pm
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  July 13, 2008 at 1:24 pm
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Basement Waterproofer
July 8, 2008 at 8:31 am
Reply

For a site like technorati, the URL I’m sure would help, but probably at a much smaller percentage than the enormous weight their brand and IBLs bring. For a site like my basement waterproofing site (www.basementsystems.com) in a small-ish industry, where there are a lot a keywords that drive traffic, URLs are very helpful.
Bob
July 6, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Reply

great article… I hate when a CMS creates its own random URL.
KBE
July 6, 2008 at 11:25 am
Reply

As for me I take no notice on URL sometimes if I have good content
super blogger
July 5, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Reply

I know sometimes my url stinks.. but i ‘ve got enough money from that’s blog..

That’s okay
Adam - Ecommerce Web Design
July 4, 2008 at 4:34 am
Reply

Some people go over the top with getting keywords into their URLs. I think that as longs as the content is there, a URL shouldn’t be that influential. Sites like technorati.com have no description of teh site whatsoever in their URl, but that does notjhing to stop them being found by users.