A URL – that stands for Uniform Resource Locator, by the way – serves a pretty simple purpose: it allows people to find a specific website when they need it. However, before anyone can use an URL, they need to remember it – and that’s why your own website’s URLs must be chosen carefully.
A URL includes the domain name – the bit ending in an extension like “.com” – followed by the path indicator “/” and then a reference to the webpage itself. So, how should you put it all together?
Match each URL to the page title
Your website could have many different pages – for example, if you run a plumbing and heating company and so offer a broad breadth of services, many of which have been given their own webpages on your site.
However, you should make sure the URL and the page title match in each case. This means a page titled “New Boilers” including “new-boilers” in its URL, a page about “Bathroom Installations” having a URL with “bathroom-installations” inserted in it, and so on.
Only use lowercase letters
While a URL can include both uppercase and lowercase letters, you should probably just stick with the latter in order to leave your URL easily readable.
Online, using just uppercase letters can make the text look like the equivalent of shouting – and going for a mix of uppercase and lowercase letting in a URL risks the URL coming across as messy and unprofessional, potentially sowing seeds of distrust in your website.
Leave punctuation out of your URLs
Again, this is a situation where, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. While your page titles and meta descriptions should include punctuation if you want them to foster a professional air, inserting punctuation into URLs is counterproductive for a few reasons.
One is that search engine crawlers don’t play well with punctuation in URLs; another reason is that URLs strewn with punctuation are harder for users to remember.
Choose future-proof URLs
Let’s assume that, at the start of 2021, you posted a blog post titled “How to cost-effectively keep your home warm in lockdown”, complete with a URL including the word “lockdown”.
Much of the advice you published might remain relevant even now, at a time when the country isn’t in lockdown – but you’re lumbered with a URL that mentions “lockdown”, leaving the webpage looking outdated.
This is why you should always, when creating a new webpage, choose an evergreen URL for it – as, then, you could regularly refresh and repurpose the on-page content without the URL holding it back.
Give yourself free rein over URL text
To this end, you should – when looking for a domain name provider – opt for one that would give you a relatively large amount of freedom over what text you choose for that domain name.
Here at Webahead, we allow our clients to choose from many different extensions – including obvious candidates like .com and .co.uk along with slightly lesser-known alternatives such as org.uk or .info – for domain names registered via our team.
