Should URL Structure Be Emphasised More In Website Construction:
When it comes to optimising the website, numerous search engine optimisation factors get involved into it like Meta tags, page content, alt tags and URL structure. Regarding the URL structure, it has been discussed many times in the SEO industry. The techniques that are mostly followed by the SEO experts with respect to the URL structure is placing the keywords in the URL so to submit in the sub-directories and social media to increase the rankings of the website.
But the question arises whether the URL structure actually plays such an important role in enhancing the website traffic? To answer your question, research has been conducted in order to make the decision on the solid grounds.
Superfluous Characters: We would have observed that sometimes, inexplicable characters like %, &, $ or @ appear in the URL. Interpreting such symbols in the URL is difficult for the search engine bots which resulted in less crawling of the sites. In case if you need to use such characters, first check the previous record to know if the search engine has ever asked to use underscores over dashes. Remember that both these signs affect the search engine readability, for instance, when a dash is used between the words of the URL like “search-engine-optimisation,” Google would consider that this URL is about “search engine optimisation,” while if the URL structure involves keywords with the underscore like “content_marketing,” Google would just read it as “contentmarketing” with no space.
Length of the URL: When it comes to the length of the URL, it varies according to each platform. For instance, the URL length for Gmail should not be more than 59 characters, Webmaster tool requires a length of 90 characters and Google blog needs 76 character length. Studies have shown that shorter the length of the URL, the more search engine visibility will your URL get in the results. Like URL that comprises 37 characters rank in the top ten results on average while URLs that contain forty eight characters rank in the top seventy results. It is not necessary that only the shorter URLs will be listed, even the longer URLs with over 60 characters can also rank high in Google.
Keywords Involved URLs: While creating the URL structure, one must make sure that the structure should be correct and sequenced appropriately. For instance
http://www.domain-name/category/child-category/grand-child-category.
Remember that when creating the URL, it should include the keyword(s), but should not be keyword stuffed or unnatural as it could be a declining factor in the search rankings.
Direct Web Traffic: Usually it is considered that the shorter URLs gain more traffic than the others. No doubt that it is right in some cases, but studies have shown that longer URLs get more traffic, even though shorter URLs produces more direct web traffic. The above research has concluded that to increase the web or blog traffic, appropriate use of keywords, dashes in the URL and averting of the superfluous characters can optimise your URL and improve the ranking in Google.