Usually, when it comes down to SEO, you are likely to put in all your efforts in analyzing and coming up with the perfect keywords that will form part of the content in order to get favorable ranking in Google Search. While relying on keywords is essential, you must ensure that this aspect does not become the universe of your SEO strategy. According to SEO NYC, there is a larger, more wholesome aspect of SEO that is often not given as much importance as it deserves. The URLs and the blog permalinks that are usually part of your website or your blog are far more important elements that should never be left ignored. Essentially, it is these URLs that the search engine also indexes and if it has not been optimized for SEO, it will fail to show favorable results even if your keywords fit the puzzle seamlessly. Therefore, a comprehensive list of tips and tricks has been compiled to help you optimize your URLs and blog permalinks for SEO.
1.) A long permalink may not always work in your favor:
Under any usual circumstances, if you are a dedicated WordPress user, the system automatically generates a permalink that resembles the title of your post. While you may consider this to be a step less and faster work, you must realize that skipping altering this step can do your SEO strategy more harm than good. While the renowned blogging tool offers you a solution, it most certainly does not go down well with search engines and their algorithms.
Essentially, having seemingly long titles are not recommended. However, the titles do not really create any issue in terms of SEO optimization but it is the resulting permalink that can make or break your SEO strategy. Having a permalink containing more than 4-5 words can cause search engines to get increasingly suspicious and thus, they may exclude your pages from the results page altogether. The same rule applies when using numerals in the permalink. While numerals in a post title can make the post look appealing, it has an exactly opposite effect on the blog permalink.
2.) Understand the difference between hyphens and underscores:
A hyphen, symbolized by ‘-‘as opposed to an underscore, which is symbolized by ‘_’ has far greater importance when it comes to search engine optimization. Whether you work on your SEO strategy yourself or rely on SEO NYC, you will always be recommended to use hyphen when separating words in the permalink. Google and the other search engines have all been programmed to accept hyphens rather than underscore. Essentially, the use of hyphen indicates space between two characters. On the contrary, using an underscore ideally indicates that the words have missing elements to them. This can lead to an immense amount of ambiguity and thus mess with your SEO strategy.
3.) Pay attention to the style of the URL and opt for Static URLs:
When it comes to optimizing the URL for SEO, a dynamic URL does absolutely no good as the additional characters like ‘?’, ‘&’, ‘=’ and the likes are likely to cause ambiguity in terms of SEO and search engines. Static URLs on the other hand, make it far much simpler for not just the search engines but also people to read and interpret appropriately.
4.) Keep the use of folders to a minimum:
Whenever you wish to optimize your URL for SEO, the folders used for naming them must be short at all times. Not just that, including too many folders can also mess with the SEO strategy, thus reducing your chances of getting a higher search rank.
Author’s bio:
Sheldon Scott is an SEO expert currently working in collaboration with a company specialising in SEO. He loves to analyze the various algorithm changes that search engines change every once in a while so as to devise better and effective white hat SEO firm
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