To improve the search visibility of your website organically it is very important to create SEO-friendly URLs. The basic 4 steps are mentioned below that will help you to create the right URL.
What is the best way to strengthen the SEO of your WordPress website?
The best way is to strengthen SEO is to make WordPress URLs SEO friendly.
If you have created a URL in the right way, then you will be able to enhance the organic search visibility. Especially you have to focus on low volume long keywords.
4 Methods to Make Your WordPress URLs SEO Friendly
1. Get a single root domain
You will find that there are different variations of root domain that can behave as functional URLs which can be an alike version of pages.
That means every page of your website plus the homepage, will based on variations and how your domain is arranged.
Different variations of the domain for URLs
https://www.mywebsite.com
http://mywebsite.com
http://www.mywebsite.com
https://mywebsite.com
Your website will be rendered on the basis of all these domains.
If you open these all websites on different tabs, you will find that the same page will get appear.
You will have to choose any one from “HTTPS” versions(the URL which follows SSLs) and the other three versions will 301 redirect globally.
You will be able to combine all link values, rankings, and indexing to a single domain or a website, by selecting one primary version of the “HTTPS” URL structure.
Another most crucial area from an SEO point is to make sure your site is fully hidden or encrypted with an SSL certificate.
In Google algorithms, the HTTPS is the small ranking signal.
Despite that for securing data in chrome, Google needs HTTPS.
These two are the important reason, that why you require active HTTPS on your website to get more rankings and enhance the experience of users.
Encrypting your URL will add a new security layer to your website domain. Thus your website URL will turn from http://mywebsite.com to https://mywebsite.com. Each and every content of your website will be transitioned to get a better position in search engines.
2. Select SEO friendly permalink structure
If you really want that search engine should identify your website content and link it with particular search keywords then you need to make sure that those URL contains the same keywords related to your topic.
While creating a custom page, consider an example if your visitors are searching for the best dance party then you have to make sure that your URL should have a keyword like
www.mywebsite.com/best-dance-party/
Rather than
www.mywebsite.com/?p=234
Which URL has more chances of getting more clicks?
The first link mentioned above with keywords has more chances of getting clicks.
Such kind of URL will indicate the Google and the people that they can find the same information that they are searching for.
In simple words, you can say that people will realize that the URL is user friendly and Google will realize that the URL is SEO friendly.
How to change the structure of permalink in WordPress
To change the permalink structure
- Visit the settings
- Click on permalinks
- Choose custom structure
- Now add custom permalinks
The type of custom permalink structure is
-
- Plain
For SEO plain permalink structure is not a good option. because plan structure will nothing justify your content or pages.
-
- Day and name
This can be a good structure in terms of SEO because it will justify when the post was created and what is the name of it. For readers, this structure can seem to be important.
-
- Month and name
This is also a good option. However, it is similar to the date and name format but the difference is this structure will only display the month of content published.
-
- Post name
For optimal WordPress SEO, this is the most important choice. You can customize the URL as that it matches your content topic.
-
- Numeric
For SEO, this structure is not good because there is nothing that will explain your content or pages.
-
- Custom Structure
To customize your URL, this structure will be useful as it will you to use WordPress-specific tags. For example, you have a big website that contains different categories that are very important for your reader then you can use tags such as
“/%category%/%postname%/”.
The concept of adding a category to a URL is the best idea. To provide more information to Google you should choose this permalink structure format.
But its your choice. you can choose any one of them as per your needs. But make sure to click on Save Changes once the permalinks settings have been selected.
Even you can make some modifications to every post and page’s URL.
Before updating or clicking on the OK button, you just need to edit the URL in the admin dashboard.
Important note for websites that are set up already
If you want to make WordPress URLs SEO friendly then you should consider this note seriously.
On an existing website, if you change one permalink structure to another one then there are high chances of losing your share counts of social media.
One a specific content suppose you have more than thousands share count then your share count will be zero as soon as you change the permalink structure.
Changing from one permalink to the other has a high chance of getting lost in search rankings.
But, in case you have a website with the plain URL, make sure to change it as soon as possible does not matter how new or old it is just change it.
Plain URL is already bad for SEO that means you are losing your visitors because of the plain URL so it’s better to change it to let visitors find relevant content from your website.
If not make sure that your WordPress automatically create 301 redirects to the new one from the old URL.
We suggest taking a test on a single page by changing the current URL to the new one and try to get access to the previous link.
A new location if you are unable to redirect the page then stop your work and find a solution to automatically redirect your website. The best solution will be to integrate the plugin which will permit you to configure them manually for every page URL you update.
3. URL structure and website architecture
Till now we have studied how to get a global format and how we can change permalink structure to make WordPress URLs SEO friendly. But now we will study the site and URL structure.
The main motto of these posts is to provide you a solution to customize URL structure with keyword and content topic focuses for every page and section.
To manage your URL string on basis of directories you should follow your main navigation and sitemap.
To add more specific information you can go more vertically.
B2B example: mywebsite.com/services/sub-service/detail-page.
eCommerce example: mywebsite.com/services/sub-service/product-name.
4. To make WordPress URLs SEO friendly rewrite it
There are some advantages and disadvantages when it comes to rewriting and writing URLs in WordPress.
The URL must be focused
Any unwanted words should be removed from your URL and add only target keywords.
“stop words” such as “a”, “the”, “of” etc will not add any value to the reader.
Such type of words added to your URL will not add any value to your reader because it will make your website page’s URL more longer.
So the URL such as
http://mywebsite.com/dance-party
is best as compare to
http://mywebsite/dance-party-we-had-was-awesome.
The URL must be short
The major ranking factor is not the length of your URL.
To relay in this point you have to make sure your URL has the most focused keywords rather than the unwanted words.
Your URL formatting should be consistent
Ensure that you are not using underscores(“_”) to split words into your pages if you are using (“-“) to split words on all your posts.
Conclusion:
No single method is defined to make WordPress URLs SEO friendly. It actually depends on the website you have. What is the industry or niche of your website and what type of content your visitors will find it more valuable.
But it is very very important and crucial to optimize the URL of your website.
