What is a “URL Structure”?
I want to walk you through a quick concept today, that you may not implement right away, but you should definitely start looking at and potentially planning for in your next web refresh.
One of the most impactful on-site changes you can make to increase the findability of your content and your website in general, is to have an organized and thoughtful URL Structure.
Just to be clear, a URL is what shows up in the address bar of your web browser (like in the photo above) For example the URL of this page is: https://nichole-smith.prev03.rmkr.net/url-matters/
When we talk about the ‘structure’ of this URL, we talking about how your individual pages and posts are organized, ideally in a hierarchy, to make your site both USER-friendly and SEO-friendly.
Some URL Structure Tips
1. Static URL
When choosing the platform for your website, you want to choose one that ensures you have as many ‘static’ URL’s as possible (which you can change/ control) versus dynamic URLs (which your web platform creates as it goes)
Static URL’s look like this: https://nichole-smith.prev03.rmkr.net/url-matters/
Dynamic URL’s often includes characters like: ?, &, %, +, =, $, cgi-bin, .cgi.
Dynamic URL’s aren’t just annoying because they’re ugly… but if you don’t know what the URL of the page is going to be, you can’t really link to it from anywhere. Equally, they’re not very human or SEO friendly. If you have a web platform that produces dynamic URL’s (some of the ‘drag and drop’ platforms are the worst culprits) I HIGHLY recommend you consider switching to WordPress ASAP.
2. Top Level Domain
The first part of this conversation is your domain. Ideally you’ll have a ‘top level’ domain (a .com) since (at least for now) they are usually the most trust and familiar for your average user.
If you have a .co or .dog (ex. workingwith.dog) sometimes users can get confused and try to type in ‘workingwith.dog.com’ since they assume everything must end in a .com
3. Secure Domain
The next domain-level upgrade to consider, is to have ‘https’ instead of just ‘http’ – this is the ‘secure’ version of http where the connection is encrypted. This is especially important if you’re taking anyone’s credit card information. You go from ‘http’ to ‘https’ when you get an ‘SSL Certificate’ from your hosting company or a third party platform like NameCheap.
4. URL Length & Other Tips
You want to be keep your entire URL under 80 characters, but ideally closer to 50. The shorter they are, the better chance they have of ranking higher in google.
Now ideally, it’s better to use the system I’m about to describe, which looks like this:
- http://www.workingwithdog.com/about/
Rather than subdomains, which look like this:
- Ex. http://www.about.workingwithdog.com
According to Neil Patel ‘Search engines tend to classify subdomains as their own independent entities, which is not great for SEO on a holistic level’.
A few more tips from Neil:
- Use Hyphens (-), not underscores(_)
- Don’t use CAPS in your URL – ensure it’s the most ‘findable’ and use all lowercase
- Don’t included the ‘a’ ‘and’ ‘or’ words in your URL
- Don’t use < > # % [ ] { } | \ ^ or blank spaces
- Ideally, you want to also avoid repeating words within the URL
- Use actual numbers instead of spelling them out: 5 instead of five
4. Keywords
It’s definitely a good idea to use keywords in your URL’s – but don’t stuff them in for the sake of it… Use 1-2 max per URL and like we discussed in our SEO Basics & Myths Revealed article, you always make sure your SEO choices put the human first.
- TOP TIP: If you’re struggling to find or understand keywords to use in your content topics and URL structures check out the ‘Content Tools’ Masterchat from our Web 101 theme. Check out my ‘Topic’ level URL below – see how I use ‘dog-business-blog’ instead of just ‘Blog’? That’s because ‘blog’ is useless for SEO, where as ‘dog-business’ is not!
- SHORT CUT: You can use SpyFU.com to enter a competitor and see what keywords they’re using!
5. URL Hierarchy System
Ok, now for the ‘best practice’ system we suggest you use for the ideal ‘URL Structure’ Hierarchy on your website. Essentially, think of your URL’s as a folder system, you want your top-level folders to be your “Categories” that everything within your whole site could fit into. Then the next level down you have ‘Topics’, and then finally at post or product-level, you have ‘Articles’.
a) Category-level (max 5-8):
Not every Category will have ‘Topic’ and ‘Article’ level URL’s below them. For example your ‘contact’ page might just be just that, ex: [Category = Contact ] http://www.workingwithdog.com/contact/
Examples:
[Category = About] http://www.workingwithdog.com/about/
[Category = Services] http://www.workingwithdog.com/services/
[Category = Blog] http://www.workingwithdog.com/dog-business-blog/
b) Topic-level
Second, you’ll have ‘Topics’ – the second level down – some “Categories” would have “Topics”…
Examples:
[Category = About, Topic= J.Nichole Smith] http://www.workingwithdog.com/about/jnicholesmith/
[Category = Services, Topic=Consulting] http://www.workingwithdog.com/services/consulting/
[Category = Blog, Topic=Brand] http://www.workingwithdog.com/dog-business-blog/branding/
c) Article-level
Not every Category or Topic will have Article-level URLS, for example of the three examples above – the ‘About’ category might stop at the ‘Topic’ level, while the other two may have ‘Article’ level URL’s:
Examples:
[Category = Services, Topic=Consulting, Article= Accelerator Call] http://www.workingwithdog.com/services/consulting/accelerator/
[Category = Blog, Topic=Brand, Article= ‘5 Dogly Princples’] http://www.workingwithdog.com/dog-business-blog/branding/5-dogly-principles/
Next Steps
Don’t worry if you find this confusing, we’ll come back to it… For now just get used to the ‘best practices’ we’ve listed above for what you and are not using in your URL’s.
Your challenge is to start brainstorming what you think your Categories and Topics may be for YOUR business URL structure. Pop in to the Facebook Group and tell us what you’re thinking!