URL Optimization: URL Structure
Understand why URLs of individual web pages is a key element of a website that demands SEO, and explore what the ideal URL structure for web pages looks like.
What is a URL?
URL, or Universal Resource Locator, is a web address that locates a web page on the internet. Search engines need to find and index pages on our website, and that is what they need URLs for. Overly complex URLs are difficult to crawl and index for search engines and less clickable to users. URL appears right above each web page in the SERPs.
Why should we optimize URLs?
Would we really want to click a page in the search results that has a URL similar to the one below?
http://example.com/ahfgdsdf/44153?=recipe-423432-123123-1246732
Instead, wouldn’t we be more inclined to click a page with a URL like the one below?
http://example.com/holiday-special/apple-pie
As it turns out, other than what our website looks like, the URL also matters in creating a complete impression.
In short, SEO-friendly URLs give two important benefits:
Improved user experience
Improved experience for crawlers
Optimizing the URL structure
Below is an illustration of what a typical URL structure looks like:
As seen in the above illustration, a URL consists of 6 main parts: protocol, sub domain, root domain, TLD, subdirectory, and article permalink.
Protocol
The protocol, or internet communication protocol, refers to how a client communicates with the host located on a server.
Google recommends using HTTPS instead of HTTP for improved user and site security [4]. HTTPS stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure, and using it ensures that the data exchanged between the users and our site is encrypted. Passwords, credit card information, and other sensitive information are safe from access by cybercriminals.
Subdomain
The subdomain is the part of the domain that comes before the main domain name.
Though we typically see "www." in place of the subdomain, any combination of characters may exist. Though we may have different subdomains for our main domain name, search engines treat each subdomain as a separate website. Webmasters have contradicting opinions as to how having multiple subdomains vs. a single subdomain affects a site’s ranking.
Subdomains are individual, dedicated hierarchies for our website, as shown in the diagram above. Each of these subdomains may be hosted on separate servers. support.google.com is a subdomain of www.google.com.
Experts argue that Google’s crawlers may see subdomains as separate websites and rank them separately. Though Google is able to make connections between subdomains of a single parent domain, they are crawled and indexed separately.
According to Neil Patel’s SEO tests, around 90% of the link juice transfers to the parent domain through subdomains [5]. In comparison, if we use subdirectories to categorize topics, discussed later, 100% of the link juice from subdirectories transfers to the root domain.
Sometimes it just makes sense to create subdomains. If we have unrelated content, we might want to separate it into different websites. For example, food.ndtv.com is a subdomain of ndtv.com.
food.ndtv.com talks about food and recipes, which does not support the purpose of the parent domain, ndtv.com. This is why the website owners decided to maintain it as a separate site.
Domain name
The domain name is the name of our website.
When we start a website, we have to register a root domain. We can create multiple subdomains or subdirectories, but they will all be branching from the root domain. We’ll learn more about optimizing the domain name in the next lesson.
Top-level domain (TLD)
The top-level domain (TLD) is what we typically see as ".com". However, it can also be ".net", ."org", ".edu", etc.
Subdirectory
The debate for subdomain vs. subdirectory is an endless one. A subdirectory, in contrast, is a subfolder in our website.
It makes our website's navigation easier for users and crawlers and helps them understand the location of the web page they’re on.
For example, shop.example.com is a subdomain of our website dedicated to e-commerce. If we sell shoes, bags, and shirts, shop.example.com/shoes, shop.example.com/bags, and shop.example.com/shirts are subdirectories. Notice that here we separate shoes, bags, and shirts into subdirectories instead of subdomains since they support the same purpose: e-commerce.
Subdirectories give structure to the website and make it easier to navigate for users and search engines. At the same time, avoid creating unnecessary folders. Too many folders can confuse the users interacting with our site.
Sometimes, we may be confronted by the dilemma to choose one among these two structures:
blog.example.comexample.com/blog
Big companies like Microsoft, typically have multiple subdomains like blog.microsoft.com because they have a large number of links to support each subdomain. Small companies and startups usually go with maintaining subdirectories, like example.com/blog. Since a 100% “link juice” transfers through from subdirectories to our domain, it can help rank small businesses faster with the limited time and resources they have.
6. Article permalink
The article permalink refers to the path that points to the exact location of a page or file.
Test your knowledge
Rearrange the blocks so that the components of a URL are in their correct order.
Choose the correct option for each of the following questions.
Why is it important to optimize URLs for SEO?
To enhance website color schemes.
To improve website loading speed.
To create a positive user experience and improve crawler performance.
To increase the number of social media shares.
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