How To Optimize Your URLs With Better URL Slugs

Optimize your URLs to drive traffic to your posts. Also, it is much easier as compared to other SEO options which might be hard to operate and out of your control. Optimizing your URLs can be done manually and it is totally under your control. Introducing URL Slug for each of your posts is also very important to get control of the position of your page on the search engine.

A slug is that part of the URL which helps identify the address of the individual page. The Slug is there at the end of the URL. It is located after the domain. A URL Slug directs the browser on the exact individual post on your website.

Elements of URL

There are five elements of an individual page on your website. These are Protocol, Subdomain, Domain, Subdirectory, and URL Slug. All of these have different functions. Subdomain and URL Slug are added according to the kind of pages is present. At a minimum level, Protocol and Subdomain are always present along with Domain on the website. The main illustration of these elements is:

Protocol – HTTP

Subdomain – www.

Domain – The Tech Loft.com

Subdirectory – marketing

URL Slug varies according to the page. For example, it can be how-to-optimize-your-URLs-for-search

Form this structure, it is clear that the Subdomain tells you the category of post, and URL Slug gives you a description of the post.

Best Ways to Manage your URL Slugs

Managing your URL Slug is the most important part as it is what impacts your post on the search engine. To reach higher traffic and maintain a good position of your post on the browser you need to maintain URL Slug by keeping a few things in mind. Let us have a look at some of the best ways to manage URL Slugs: –

It Must Be Very Simple

Your URL Slug must be very simple. It must consist of a simple description of the page. Try to avoid complex URL Slug which is hard to remember. If your URL Slug would be easy then the visitor can easily remember it and even type it on the browser to visit your site again. In case of complex URL Slug, anyone would hardly bother to re-enter it again and your page might get lost in the crowd of millions of pages available on the search engine. It would be very hard for your visitor to visit it again by entering a complex URL. A Simple URL Slug also keeps the URL user-friendly and search effectively. If it would contain simple words, it is likely to match the search keywords.

It Must Be Short

Try to avoid very long URL Slugs as they will, in turn, impact the size of the URL. The URL Slug must be short and relative. For this, you can eliminate all the extra words which are not very important. For example, if a post is titled ‘Best ways to manage URL Slugs: Easy method’, then you can make your URL Slug, best-ways-to-manage-URL-slugs instead of best-ways-to-manage-URL-slugs-easy-method. In this case, we eliminated an easy method from the URL Slug as it was ‘extra’ and was portraying nothing special but was only just increasing the length of the URL.

It must be user-friendly

The user who is looking at your URL must be able to figure out what your post is about by just reading the URL Slug. This is very important to hit the target audience. In the case of complex URL Slugs which might even contain unnecessary words, the reader might get confused about the actual motive behind the page. So, try to make it more user-friendly so the user might be able to connect to it. This also helps the search engine to reflect your keyword easily as it will be easy to relate it with the keyword.

Avoid including everything into URL

URLs must be simple, short, and user-friendly. But what to include in it? Sometimes, it might be possible that your article might contain a lot of important keywords. It might seem a good idea to you to introduce all such words in your articles but in reality, you must avoid it. Including every important thing in your URL Slug will make your URL look long. Secondly, it might lose its simplicity and due to this, it may also become less user-friendly. Also, try to avoid very Technical Jargons used within the post in your article. They might seem good keywords attracting traffic but they will hardly match the search of an individual.

Select relevant Keywords

It is not always necessary to make the title of your article your URL Slug. It might also include some of the important keywords. Now again, looking back at the previous step, it must not include everything you find useful. Then how to choose what must be included and what not? So, simply if your title suits well then, its best to include it only in your URL Slug. But if your article has some keywords which might portray your article better to the user, include them. In simple words, it must be created in such a way that the users would be able to figure out what your post is all about as soon as they read the URL.

Be Unique

Being unique is most important. Never use a URL Slug which already belongs to some other page as it might cost you later. Your content will be termed as duplicate or plagiarized content. Every website has its unique address so must be the case of your post. If your content is once marked as duplicate content, it will highly impact your SEO performance in a negative manner. Also, it might result in errors reaching your page.

Hyphens matter

In your URL, separate words with the help of hyphens. DO not stick all the words together it might affect the reader’s ability to read and comprehend what you have written. As you cannot separate words with help of space, do it with hyphens and separate words to ensure the others can read it and comprehend it easily.

Say Not to Automatically generated URLs

Automatically Generated URL is automatically loaded when you create a new page. But this type of URL is not very helpful in gaining better performance. Using automatically or dynamically generated results might not be a good idea as it might result in a crawling result. For better performance, use static URLs that are created or edited by you. Try to create a URL with all the tips that have been mentioned.

URLs are key to your page. If the URL is accessible, only then your page is accessible. That is why it is always better to use such a URL which will find a better place among the other related pages on the search engine. While creating a URL, you must keep in mind if it can reflect the real motive behind the page. URL is a voice to your page. It must explain all about the page in just a few words. The best part about managing URL Slug and optimizing your URL is that it is in your hand. Other SEO tools are generally much more related to others but it is totally up to you how you will manage your URL.