This article is from Greg Barrette, Director of Brand Management at Careerealisn.com.
One of the most vital SEO factors of any blog post is the URL itself.
If your article’s URL is messy with irrelevant text then it dilutes the strength of any keywords included.
Here’s a good example…
Article Title
4 Ways to Turn Resume Fluff into Marketable Facts
Bad URL
www.careerealism.com/2012/02/06/4-ways-to-turn-resume-fluff-into-marketable-facts
Reason
Contains unnecessary text at the beginning and words such as “to” and “into.”
Good URL
www.careerealism.com/resume-fluff-marketable-facts
Reason
The article’s keywords are the only text used in the URL and are in order of strength, going left to right.
The following text from Google’s SEO starter guide is an awesome explanation as to why my example of a bad URL is just that… BAD:
“Bad URLs can be confusing and unfriendly. Users would have a hard time reciting the URL from memory or creating a link to it. Also, users may believe a portion of the URL is unnecessary, especially if the URL shows many unrecognizable parameters. They might leave off a part, breaking the link.”
If your URLs need to be cleaned up, please let me suggest you begin the above strategy immediately going forward.
However, it will be up to you whether you want to go back and change your old ones.
Use this article to determine if that decision is too risky or not.
Either way, here are some quick tips for user-friendly URLs:
- Keep them less than five words.
- Rank your words for keyword relevancy and apply the stronger ones first, going left to right.
- Avoid numbers and wasteful words such as “the,” “and,” or “in.”
