A Beginner's Guide to Good SEO Structure for Your Site URL's

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is a technique and practice that ultimately has one goal: To make your website reach higher in rankings when certain keywords are searched in search engines such as Google. If you're not familiar to the inner workings of how SEO works, a good place to start is by taking a look at your link structures. Website-with-SEO.com uses structures in which those loose URL's aren't a bunch of random characters and numbers, but are actually the type which reflects the hierarchy and navigation of your website.

There are two major aspects that good site URL structures affect: how accessible your site will be to search engine crawlers who will put you in the search results, and the user experience of the readers of your site.

Plan your SEO structure well to ensure clean URL's

You start with a good content organization plan. Website-with-SEO.com will go a long way to create content in a clearly organized and straightforward way through out categories and subcategories. This is one of the the most crucial steps, as this will also dictate the structure of your site's URL.

For each page of your site, it must reflect its place and hierarchy in its URL. You want clean URL's, not a bunch of randomly generated numbers and symbols. Not only does this help your viewers grasp the content and organization of your site, but also helps search engine crawlers to easily digest the information on your site, which then helps them determine its relevance on search results.

If you are using content management systems (i.e. Wordpress) there are options there that help you determine what kind of URL structure you prefer. Always prefer clean URL's with actual words, and reflect the organization of your site. Wordpress sites are good for huge sites with a lot of content.

It is best to use only 1 domain

At first, what seems like a "good solution" to having your content reach more people is by having more access points, which in this case will be the domain names. A lot of site owners think that having several domains for a single site is a good idea that will translate to more visitors, but that's not the case. Your site or blog will perform better in rankings if the whole thing is in one place. Also, you want to avoid losing viewers from the redirects that will take place once you have a complex bunch of URL's that all point to the same place. Think of URL recall as well. You want your readers to remember one address, not 3 or 5 addresses.

Make your site easy to navigate

An important aspect that makes your site rank higher is by how much traffic you get. The more people go to your site, the more relevant your site looks to search engines, thus placing it higher on the ranks. While the goal is high traffic, the duration of the user's stay on the site should not be overlooked.

Aside from ensuring good, quality content that will keep your site interesting and useful for readers, another aspect that affects the duration of the reader's stay is user experience. How do you make a user feel welcome to freely browse around your site? By making sure your navigation is easy, clear, and simple. A reader won't stay long in a site that is difficult for him/her to navigate. This is why you should opt for clean URL's--to make your site be navigated easier.

arnego2 is the author of this article on Websites with SEO structure. Find more information, about SEO structure here.