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Do Your URLs Stink?


They do if they look like line noise

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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News Tags: SEO, URL Design

Comments

great article

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.

oopps

I mean David.

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http://www.best-loads.com/ -

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Very important in small industries

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.

great article... I hate when

great article... I hate when a CMS creates its own random URL.

As for me I take no notice

As for me I take no notice on URL  sometimes if  I have good content

URLs

The word on the stret says the URL is not so important as long as the content is good and there are plenty of incoming links. Nontheless having a URL that is related to the site or has a keyword that is related to the site can't hurt.

For example my URL on my site is bad bu that doesn't mean The site willnot be regognized as a search machine site.

Know

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

That's okay

Some people go over the top

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.

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