Example of a good URL
An important part of SEO, is the way the URL is written. It helps search engines understand where they are sending a searcher and what the searcher should find when they get there. URL stands for “Uniform Resource Locator” and is the basis of everything on the web as we know it. Much like your home address, it’s similar to a physical address used to ship packages or goods from a vendor to your home, or from your home to a friend or relatives home – only a website is moving files and data.
There are, and will always be conversations and blogs about what is important in SEO and what will get you a good ranking on the first page after the searcher clicks “Go.” One of the elements absolutely necessary to search is a URL, or “Uniform Resource Locator.”
There are many comparisons we can make in our daily lives to URLs: social security numbers, bar codes on products in a warehouse, phone numbers, etc. For this posting let’s look at it like a home address, because I think it’s a very good, clear example.
Much like you and I, a website needs somewhere to live – its gotta’ have a home. It needs a place to put its belongings, and it needs somewhere to allow others to find it. Websites live on servers – that is the actual physical place where all websites live. It might be in a data center, it could be on a personal computer being used as a server, it could be in a basement somewhere. Doesn’t matter. But it all starts from the server – the website’s home.
This begs the question, how does a website get out of its house, or how does the data get from a server to your computer screen. Just like we need the postal service or a shipping company to send things, websites need an internet connection. Without a connection to the outside world, they are just files on a server or computer somewhere – flat, boring, and useless to the outside world.
Along with the internet, a website has to have an address. There is a whole complicated process involving things called @records, and CNAME files, hosting organizations, and IP addresses – but for this post, we are glomming over that part and just going from server to user and focusing on URLs.
Similar to an address for a house or apartment, in order to transfer data (web pages, images, videos) from the website’s home on a server there must be a starting and ending address, just as if you were shipping a package from your home somewhere else.
Let’s look at how web pages are like files on your computer.
The starting address for the website could be something as simple as www.chaapde.com, or it could be something called a subdomain (www.subdomainname.chaapde.com), or it could have a path on the server where the files are stored for a single page (www.chaapde.com/renewable/windowfilm). In order to connect with a website we need to know its address, and it has to have an internet connection.
This address structure is just like in your documents folder on your hard drive. You have your basic documents folder, and maybe like me you have a folder named “Projects” and inside of that folder I have a folder for each month (January, February, etc.), and inside I have “june_seo_project_1.doc, seo_project_2.doc.” Web pages and websites are organized in a very similar way. I can find a document on my computer in the exact same way I can find a web page by typing in the URL.
For each of the previous website address examples you can see the basis of the URL is the same – it’s the chaapde.com web address. That is the starting point for the websites. As you can see in the last example (if the page was real) you would expect that site or page to be about renewable energy and window film. Just like my files if I wanted to find a project for June, I could type in c:\russell\documents\projects\june. This is exactly the same way we find web pages, and exactly how we ship and receive packages in the mail.
Next, let’s look at why naming is important.
Just like it’s important to label my files with descriptive names, it’s absolutely imperative to create web pages and web sites with names that mean something. If I wanted to find a file on my computer about my June SEO projects and I search my computer for “June SEO Project” but if my file was name a229zzf751.doc, I’d have no hope of finding it. Web pages need to have some form of indicator in their URLs that we and machines understand when doing a search.
If I want to send a package to my brother in India , but I have the wrong address on the package, he’s never going to get it. Just like if I have a file on my computer named something crazy, I’m never going to find it unless I know exactly where it is in my folder structure. Similarly if a website or webpage has a random address, it’ll be difficult and sometimes impossible for me to find it.
Fortunately, there are other indicators to help search engines find pages, such as content, keywords, and meta tags and descriptions, so while a bad URL or address is definitely not a good thing, it won’t cripple a searchers ability to find a web page (hopefully).
Now, imagine if all of the URLs were “optimized” or given names that related to their content… you can see where I’m going – they would be 1,000,000 times easier to find (okay, maybe not that much, but close). A great disservice we as website owners do is not create URLs that make it easy for Google to find our pages.
Okay, sure, packages and the postal service, web pages and URLs – I just need to have a good URL, right?
No. SEO isn’t just about a good URL, or even good keywords, or page title, or metadata – it’s about ALL of it. It’s a unified system that works together, like parts of a clock, or the different parts that make up your car or truck. A clock can function without numbers, but it makes much less sense that way. A car can operate without numbers as well, but let’s hope the state trooper who pulls you over is understanding about your speed.
Integrated, well-maintained, cared for, regularly managed SEO programs are essential to page rank, site traffic, and in the end revenue and how well your company does. We can do things at the 50 percent mark, so some SEO tactics, or go back and try and do SEO when we leave it out, but just think of how much better things would go if we operated at 100 percent and plan for SEO.