If you’re reading this article, the odds are good that you take SEO seriously.  Perhaps you’ve even created some great content, done some research on Google Analytics, and used your social media accounts to promote it all.  If so, then congratulations!  You’re well on your way to great search engine rankings!  However, even if you’ve done all of this, there is still one very simple problem that could be holding you back a great deal–your URL.  In this article, we’ll explain how URL can affect search engine rankings, discuss the best URLs to choose for your website, and the provide simple instructions on how to create such a URL for your WordPress content.

URL and SEO

Contrary to what some web developers may tell you, not all URLs are created equal.  Sure–no matter what URL you choose for your website, it’s not going to affect your pages crawlability, its speed, or any other technical matter.  What it will affect, though, is the ability of web users and search engines to determine what topics each page deals with. It’s anyone’s guess what:

example.com/rygn39_eue_569

is going to feature, and this hurts SEO.  On the other hand, you can probably guess what

example.com/Improve-your-SEO

is going to be about. Search engines appreciate this, and they will reward you for it!

Choosing the best URL

As mentioned above, a URL that is genuinely descriptive of a page’s content will produce better rankings. Apart from being descriptive, however, it’s also important that your URLs be “pretty.”  What exactly does this mean?

Use-hyphens-between-words, instead_of_underscores.

Don’t include unnecessary numbers or symbols. (They’re&really^^annoying.656666)

Keep it short!

Creating a URL for your WordPress

WordPress URLs are better nowadays than they were in the past, as the site now the title of each post in that post’s URL.  However, these URLs are generally not pretty.  Thankfully, this problem is easy to fix–and, in fact, you can even standardize the format for all of your posts in order to make SEO-friendly URLS easy!  Here’s how to do it:

In the admin menu, go to settings and click on permalink.  From there, you’ll be offered a list of “common settings,” as well as the option to choose a custom setting.  Under “common settings,” you’ll notice that the first option is “plain,” and this is the default option for wordpress users.  After that you will see “day and name,” as well as “month and name.”  These options are worth considering if you are a news blog, however for most users they add an unnecessary length to the URLs without contributing anything meaningful.  “Numeric” adds the number of each post, which is also unnecessary. For most users, “post name” is the best option, as it structures the URL around the post name without including any other data.   Though some “custom” options may be worth pursuing for advanced users, the simplicity and length of “post name” is difficult to beat, and we recommend it for most users.