SEO URLs – Relevance from the start

A URL is the acronym for “Universal Resource Locator” – or in other words it is an address of an item that can be found using your web browser. Every URL needs to be unique and must conform to a couple of fairly basic rules so that every browser can understand what request is being made and where it refers to. So, as all URLs need to be completely unique, and many coding languages can make use of properties within the URL, a large number of “out of the box” software packages for building and managing websites will utilise complex strings within the URL to identify different areas of the site.

So, it is not uncommon to see URL’s which look like this:

www.flosee.co.uk/index.php?page_id=482

This is extremely efficient for the code, as it will have an identifier somewhere which is told to listen out for a “GET” variable (a changeable element within the URL itself) of “page_id”, and from that then determine what content to display. That said, it does NOTHING for either humans looking at your site (always remember – humans first!), or for the search engine robots looking either. So, how do we go about making it nice for humans and search engines without drastically affecting the performance of your code?

Software specific SEO URLs

Any software pack worth its salt has at least one effective plugin/module/addon or contribution which will automatically update your URLs for you. What we are looking to do with SEO URLs is to put relevant keywords into the web address of every single page on your site. This has a large number of benefits:

1. Humans first – Imagine you are telling a firend about this great product you found online. Is it easier to say go look at “flosee.co.uk/index.php?page_id=425″, or does it sound more logical to say “go to flosee.co.uk/seo-urls” – they both point to the same page, but the first is awkward and easy to get wrong, whilst the second one is easier to say and also lets the second person know what the page is all about.
2. Relevancy – chances are your website has a central theme. Google in particular uses a system called “latent semantic indexing” which will look at a core keyword for your site and then determine whether relative words are being used. So a site selling tomatoes might also heavily feature the words “greenhouse”, “fertiliser”, “gro-bag”, “plum” and “cherry”. The system used is a lot more advanced than this, but thats the general idea. By putting your keywords within every single one of the SEO URLs on your website, you are building relevancy and boosting the theming of your site, thereby giving you credibility and boosting your chances of high rankings for you.
3. Content loading – naturally within your website you will have contextual internal linking. If all of your links contain SEO URLs then you are adding your most important keywords to your pages – again boosting your theming attempts and also adding credibility to your claims to rank highly for those keywords. Your site is more relevant because all of your internal links contain the words that matter to you in the search results.

Performance impact of SEO URLs

The performance impact of your SEO URLs SHOULD be minimal, provided the system you are using has been well developed and thoroughly tested. If you notice a detrimental effect on the speed of your site, then speak to your developer urgently, or siwtch to an alternative addon offering SEO URLs (if available). If you have asked us to complete your onsite SEO or you are an SEO contract client, then we will advise you on the best package to use based on our experience. If you are developing your own website then please make sure you do extensive research into which method is best to use for your own SEO URLs – they are an essential ingredient to SEO success.