How to Make your URLs SEO Friendly

Hey Guys,

I'm hoping someone could help me with something.

My site so far is getting around 60-40 traffic - 60% PPC and 40% Organic results. Approx 30-40 unique hits per day.

Ive done SEO to my site but i'm not sure on how to improve it from here.

Im hoping some experts here can tell me the best way to make my URLs more SEO friendly so they no longer show up with the .php at the end in the address bar.

as an example for my logo design page. It currently goes to MYSITE.com.au/logo_design_special.php and i wanted it to just show up as logo_design_special/ - I want to do this to all pages so far there is about 90 pages in total.

I have already setup my .htaccess to point back to MYSITE.com.au/index.php[/url] and also configured a custom page not found 404 .

the site im refering to is www.swiftproductions.com.au

thanks

 

you don't need to rewrite your url from logo_design.php to logo_design. It doesn't make a difference.

URL rewriting is needed when you have special characters in your URL like if you have the url like www.domain.com/cat=47&item_id=22&s_id=2 then you need to do URL rewriting so that it would be helpful for your visitors & SE both. If you have keyword in URL then it is good from SE point of view and for users it would be easy to understand what your page is all about.

 

Making you URL seo friendly can give you better SERP in Search engine .Making a URL seo friendly is mean by putting you main keyword to the URL

 

You should be add at your header canonical Meta Tag, It might be removed multiple pages problems, some of the other topics URL rewriting, URL rewriting is required at stage when your page url as session ID, query string, Most important thing is place keyword in your URL for which you want to promote your website.

 

ok so my understanding here is that there is no need to have my url without the .php extension? i just though it would be easier to se... Also almost all my pages have the keyword in the url of that particular page.

Is there anything else i can do to help increase rankings and positions.

Also is is better to use _ or - ?? example logo_design or logo-design ?

thank you

 

You can use dash rather than underscores

 

Use your keyword in the url & make sure use of underscores...

 

Use hyphen instead of underscores. As if you have url like keyword1_keyword2.html then it would get priority if someone type in Google search for keyword1_keyword2 (which is a rare case) while if you have URLs like keyword1-keword2 then it would be useful in all the cases whether one searches for keyword1 or keyword 2 or keyword1 keyword2. As told by Matt Cutt in his blog: mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

 

ahhh ok... thank you so much daniel...

If i change all my urls to ready as an example from logo_design.php to logo-design.php how can i have the logo_design.php re-direct to the new url?

I will have a read of it tomorrow when im at the office. thanks mate

Just a silly question but would anyone know if my site would be ready to get into DMOZ if not is there anything else i can do to the site to help its rankings online and what i can do to get the site listed in DMOZ?

thanks

 

if you haven't work for your site till now, i mean to say haven't got listed your URL anywhere, i would suggest you to rename your pages as you would not receive any harm. otherwise you have to do a 301 redirection page wise. If your site is hosted on IIS server then you could ask your hosting company for the same. If it is hosted on Apache then you have to add the redirection code in htaccess file.

 

I suggest you to please don't rewrite the URLs from /logo_design_special.php
to logo_design_special/.

Because search engine crawlers are OK with .php URLs. It has problem with dynamic URLS only. For Example. /logo_design_special.php?f=21. This can cause a problem in SEO. If you have this kind of URLs you should have change it.

Second thing is that, to make a URL SEO friendly you should have your main targeted keyword in the URL. You have "logo design special" in your domain if its your main keywords than its good SEO friendly URL. Keep your URLS short and easy to remember.

So, I don't recommend you to change the URL.

 

You can create couple of new page with long tell keywords and Include them in Url, This very easy thing to do with old domain.

 

Your URLs should contain your main targeted keywords and less complicated.

 

No Flash, No Animation and less page size. If it is dynamic site, use url rewriter. Use external style sheet.

 

Make your URL short and as much as possible your main keyword is present in your URL.

 

You want your homepage to be a good landing page for PPC, so focus your seo on inner pages. Make new pages for each keyword you want to target, and make the url "homepage.com/keyword"

Don't worry about trying to get a new domain.

 

The url should be easy to read and short. You can put your main keyword in the url.

 

Try to get your KW's in your url. that would be much helpful for you.

 

you URL should be short and easy to understand, so that the visitor doesn't have any problems reading it

 

Great suggestions and advices. even i believe that your main keyword should be in your url with less complications.
cheers