Enter a URL
When it comes to optimizing your website - making the site optimal and easier for users to find and access - you want to make the entire as user-friendly as possible. It is important to consider every possible component of your sight 4 optimization. Many user guides will mention making the site smaller in size, or using special plugins. However, one can consider even more simplified approaches when it comes to site optimization. One of the more less extreme routes would be to consider rewriting the URL. In order to do this, you must study the approaches and techniques of changing your URL to something that is more meaningful to a user. However, using our URL Rewriting Tool helps in dramatically changing a complex looking URL to a user-friendly link that the average web user can understand and remember for present and future visits to your website.
A site that is dynamic will normally have a web link that includes variables, which contain information relevant only to the program’s coding execution. Unless they are already a web developer, to a potential customer, this is information that may only further confuse them. In addition, by not having a URL relevant to the site’s content, you are missing out on an opportunity to further advertise your site through these means. The purpose of URL rewriting is to plant a site’s address in a web user’s memory. The process of making your URL more attractive through URL rewriting is further explained in the next following paragraphs.
Your domain name is one of the first things web users see when they click on your site.
You want it to stand out so that they’ll remember what your site is mainly all about. Let’s say your site URL is the following:
http//www.salontherapy.com/user_type.php?gender=any&age=all&hair_color=allcolors
With this kind of link, a user’s attention won’t be engaged by the length and complexity of this URL. Keeping it simple will attract a web user more than having an extra long URL.
The following is a more simplified and user friendly URL:
http//www.salontherapy.com/user-profile
From reading the URL, it is clear to the user what the site link directory structure is all about. The salon site has a section which holds user information, which is stored in an online profile.
Also, notice the hyphen located in between the words “user” and “profile.“ Search engines treat hyphens as spaces, which optimizes the search results for your website. Keywords are extremely relevant when forming optimal and user-friendly URL’s. Another relative tip is to make sure when we rewriting your URL, you lessen the use of underscores. Though similar looking to hyphens, search engines do not interpret underscores as spaces, and will not help in optimizing your URL.
Shorter URL’s: Straight And to the Point
When a user searches the World Wide Web,Their minds are working rapidly, scanning through the results from a search engine. Anything that is too long and complex will overwhelm the user, and lose their attention. This also includes long URL links. The parameters of a URL may be beneficial to the developer, but for the user, it's just complex web jargon. When it comes to a URL and search engines, less is more. However, one doesn't have to take this to the extreme and limit the characters to as small as possible. It is recommended to consider URLs with 100 or more characters. When considering minimization, a URL with 50 to 60 characters is actually short enough, but you might still want to optimize the keywords in the URL to avoid any user confusion.
Keywords in URL Rewriting
Choosing special keywords is very important when rewriting your URL. One topic to consider is which type of online venue your site will be most viewed on. The following paragraphs explain different online situations when it comes to URL rewriting, along with optimal tips on what rewriting factors to consider, depending on where your website URL link will be most viewed.
Using Keywords for SEO
No matter what type of site your URL is displayed in, Search Engine Optimization is a must regarding what needs to be considered when choosing keywords for URL rewriting. It is the default and also the first considerable topic for many different components of optimizing your website. You are going to want to use keywords that generate more traffic. Often times this includes keywords that are more simplified and less unique. In our first example, one coult also consider using words like “beauty” or “relax” in the URL, because people often relate spas to enhancing their appearance and also relaxation. If you use less popular keywords, like the last name of the spa owner, or the name of a complex therapeutic technique that does not often occur in a spa, search engines most likely will not consider those first as unique words, thus your website ranking would be lower and your results will not appear in the search engine for possibly many pages.
Using Keywords for Social Media
A web site creator should consider not only the user-friendly reasons of simplifying the URL, but also the social sharing aspects that simplifying a URL can benefit. Your site can be present on various social platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Optimizing your URL by rewriting it is important for promoting your site, for either business or personal gain and popularity. Hundreds if not thousands of people can view a link to your site everyday, so you must truly consider this when rewriting your URL. On a social site, social media users will often be in a relaxed state when browsing profiles and pages through the social site. Thus, it is important to consider this when rewriting your url. You want to make sure that the URL is not only simplified, but attractive and casual enough to gain the viewing eye of your average user. Consider the following example:
http://www.funevents.com/rock-music-concerts
This URL is short and simple, helping a user instantly see that the website promotes something that is “fun,” lists entertaining and engaging events and that it contains information regarding rock music concerts. So the URL is straight and to the point if a user wants to pursue looking at the information which is on the website. Also, remember to place your URL within a significant profile or the section of the social media site, thus making it more attractive to the user who is interested in the category of your website.
Other considerations when rewriting URL’s
Though URL rewriting results in a simpler and more user-friendly URL, there are still topics that have to be considered and explained, which may be too complex to the normal web user. However, it is important to review the topics, as it is part of the family of web programming and search engine optimization.
Regular Expressions
Using regular expressions can be a very powerful tool when it comes to URL rewriting. Regular expressions are basically patterns in your url, that enable search engines to find your site easier. They include using various numbers and letters (alphanumeric characters) in a particular order. They also include operation symbols to help in writing certain expressions, along with specific syntax when developing them. Regular expressions are beyond the scope of this article, but should definitely be considered if you are very specific and wanting to rewrite your URL.
Web Servers
Different types of web servers may have specific rules when it comes to rewriting your URL. You may have to have your URL in a specific format in order to be valid on your server. Thus, it is very important to review the rules of how you can rewrite your url, depending on which web server yout web site is on.
Web languages
It is also important to consider which web languages your website is uses. The site languages may need specific parameters visible in order to execute your site for user viewing. Perhaps searching values that you want to use cannot be possible, due to the programming language configuration that is required, depending on the type of language used. Languages that you may have to consider include but are not limited to: HTML, PHP, JavaScript, python, Etc. These are some of the more popular web programming languages which may require certain number or text characters to not be used, as a result of them possibly being reserved by the web programming language.
Test it Out
After you are done with your URL rewrite, it is important to test it out and see if it is functional, and also optimal for search engines. It may take time to see the results of your url rewrite, because some search engines may take hours or even days to crawl through your website and see your new URL. You can visit various popular search engines to see what page your site is on: Google, Yahoo, and being are good examples of popular search engines to test and see how your site ranks within. After a while, if your URL rewriting is very good and user friendly, you might see your web page in the first ten search results!
Conclusion: URL Rewriting is Worth it
The process of url-rewriting may be possibly complex depending on how you are executing it. It may even take days or weeks to create the perfect rewrite for your needs. However, the benefits that apply to the popularity of your website are almost endless. Our URL Rewriting Tool can help with this task and provide a number of recommendations you can use in your web page optimization.
You might want to check out Google's search engine requirements. Their new technique, PANDA, is a very popular standard that web developers stand by. This gives rules that enable a site to be more popular. Any site that does not conform to at least an average amount of the standards will not give the site the honor of being in the higher site ranking pages of their search engine site. Google also has tools that can help you in making your site most optimal as well. Our URL Rewriting Tool also can help in making your URL more optimal for popularity.
You have to also think of the audience that you want to attract when rewriting your URL. Do you want to attract a more scholarly or social audience? Would you like your site to be considered by only fun or serious web site users? These are all things that you must consider when performing the URL rewriting. It is very important at times to not only be specific, but also broad if you want a larger audience. The audience you attract can also be of personal preference. Perhaps you don't want the site to be seen by a certain group of users, such as less private users in relation to this topic. You also have to consider which type of platform you want your information to be viewed on. Being creative and thinking of these things are truly helpful when web optimizing and rewriting your URL.
URL rewriting is a tool belonging to a group of many techniques used in Search Engine Optimization. However, It's is arguably one of the most visible techniques you can use for SEO. Not only well rewriting your url optimize search engines in finding your site, but it also increase is a popularity of your site to World Wide Web users as well. So the time, patience and dedication to rewriting your url is well worth it, and using our URL Rewriting Tool can make this task much easier.