Why URL Structuring is Important for a Website?

Even though the topic is rather debatable in search industry in regard to ranking, two major schools of thoughts mostly prevail in this realm. While one category of SEO gurus consider placing keywords in the URL is vital and that a webpage is not going to rank unless there are keywords in the URL, the other holds views that are different. In fact, they believe that keyword in the URL isn’t all that important from the usability point of view – either with the search engines or that of the visitors. What is more, they are not in favor of giving emphasis to keyword-rich URLs for counting relevancy. Be that as it may, the subject needs more in-depth study and better exploration before any conclusion could be arrived at.

 35URL and Information architecture

For the creation of a successful website, it is critical that its information architect would consistently use and place site navigation and cross links conveniently across it. Moreover, the URL structure should also support a page’s relevant message as much as possible. However, as too many cooks spoil a broth, too many SEOs are likely to produce a divide-and-rule strategy sans comprehending its far flung consequences, as a result of which the purpose is likely to become lost. For instance, online SEO firms ruthlessly recommend websites to build sub-domains (http://subdomain.com) instead of sub-directories (http://domain.com/subdirectory) for the simple reason that a sub-domain home page act as extra or additional home pages. Since search engines by nature weigh a home page more as compared to other site pages, one with multiple home pages are sure to rank higher in search engines, they argued.

This is alright as long as the pages are thoroughly cross-linked; URLs with subdirectories are likely to rank as good as those with subdomains. The depth of subdirectories also does not matter much as long as all the related pages are thoroughly cross-linked. But what happens when this does not happen? Well, here the information architect can solve the problem by way of defining different types of cross linking and applying it appropriately to the best of his/her clientele.

Dynamic vs. Static URLs

Honestly speaking, URL structure often proves to be a bewildering topic. What is more, you can not but forgive people if they tend to assume that a Dynamic URL is likely to contain sundry funky characters, such as “?” “=” “&” , etc, as in http://www.site.com/products.asp?product_no=25 as compared to http://www.site.com/dancingshoes.html. Initially, the first URL may seem to be dynamic, while the second may seem static. But it is worthwhile to remember that a static-looking URL can be database-driven and a dynamic-looking URL can in realty be a static URL in web internet services.

However, the fact remains that search engines usually refrain from crawling websites with too many parameters in the URL. Moreover, search engine software technicians can recognize URL patterns that are potentially problematic. Additionally, search engines limit the number of characters they’ll crawl in a URL. This is partially due to known problems in URL structures and partially to Web site usability. If you go to any SERP and look at the URL structure, you are sure to find that static-looking, shorter URLs are the easiest to remember URLs. I hope you have got the message.