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SEO: The Stuff You Can’t See, Part 3

SEO CURTAINDid you complete a set of description meta tags for each page in your site?

We’re still in the realm of things you can do only if you can modify the html for your site. If html is Greek to you, don’t hesitate to talk with your webmaster or website designer. They will know what you are talking about and can implement these Search Engine Optimizations with your direction.

Behind the Curtain SEO Step 3:

Create simple, user-friendly urls.

“URL” stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is the “address” you see in the bar at the top of your web browser. In the case of this blog post, for example: https://potentlanguage.com/2013/06/20/seo-the-stuff-you-cant-see-part-3/. (Note that this blog is created in WordPress.com, and while your ability to edit the html framework of your site in WordPress.com is limited, you can edit the final portion of your url. Just below the title of your post you will see the “permalink” and an edit button.)

Keep your urls simple. It helps search engines zero in on the most important content on your page if that information is highlighted in your url.

Keep your keyword strategy in mind. Put the most important keywords first in your url and remember that the more keywords you use, the less weight each one will have when the search engine is trying to determine what your page is about. Let’s say you have a three-page website where you sell pink necklaces and pink earrings, called pinkjewelry.com, the urls for the home page would be http://www.pinkjewelry.com. The other pages would have the following urls:

http://www.pinkjewelry.com/pink_necklaces/

http://www.pinkjewelry.com/pink_earrings/

Remember that the url is usually displayed as part of search results and keeping it simple and descriptive makes it friendlier for people to remember and share.

Here are few more things you can do with urls that will help with SEO:

  • If you have urls that contain numbers or code, replace the numbers with words.
  • If your urls are overly long or complex, try to simplify them.
  • If your site includes lots of urls, try to organize them using a simple directory structure. Again, this may be getting a bit advanced for us content creators. Imagine you need to organize the pages of your website into a physical filing system. How would you set up your folders and sub folders so that the categories are easy to understand and the system is easy to navigate? Once you’ve got that structure in mind, your webmaster can set up the directory structure.

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