Why URLs Still Need To Be Optimized

October 25, 2007 – 5:35 pm

Ever wonder why you are sitting in a meeting (or on a phone call), still talking about optimizing URLs in the year 2007?

It’s probably because there are too many uneducated search marketers influencing your client. But, for your sake, I hope that is not the case and you have convinced your client or company that stuffing keywords into the URL path will NOT help your organic ranking.

Assuming that is the case, let’s look at why URL optimization SHOULD still be part of the conversation. I have narrowed it down to Three Golden Rules… (please poke me if you have another golden rule)

Size Matters

I know people have told you that it doesn’t matter but it does; the shorter the better. A long URL presents a few problems:

  1. They are impossible to remember.
  2. They look spammy.
  3. They often break inside an email
  4. They are un-linkable (no one wants to put a link paragraph on their page)

If you don’t know how to rewrite your URLs then I suggest just using Tiny URLs next time you think it’s appropriate to build a link (or send out) a link that looks like: http://www.thelongestlinkintheworld.com/makeitlonger/seriouslylong/thinkthisisridiculous?id=123456789&cmp=aldkoemmntukdl97877tjdme&type=6d546a546d5dd6ada655d6a6d65

Increase Traffic

While keywords in your URL are not going to help you rank higher in organic SERPs for related searches, they will help traffic to your site. Like in PPC, the URL that comes up in the search results is part of your Ad (err… listing). It part of the message that is quickly telling the user what information you have and why they should want it. Relevant keywords in your URL not only help tell the user this information but these keywords (if tightly related to the users query) will become bolded. And bolded, relevant keywords will help increase the likelihood a user will click on your listing.

Built-in Anchor Text

This is the most important point (because it actually does help ranking). People are going to slap your URL on their page and a lot of the time they aren’t going to add anchor text. Whether you are actively link building (outreach) or it happens outside your influence, you will not be able to micro-manage every last link that is pointing back to you. So instead of loosing some edge in the link game by missing out on relevant anchor text, make sure your URLs ARE YOUR ANCHOR TEXT. By adding relevant keywords (as opposed to random numbers and hash marks) in your URL, you ensure that if anyone randomly slaps a link back to you on their page, you will have anchor text.