In What Ways Are URL Slugs Important to SEO?

URL slugs give you an advantage when it comes to SEO and usability.

Automated Transcript:

So last question from Tim, Tim asks how important our URL slugs for SEO?

 Is this Antiquated not only for a blog post, like 3 ways to add value to our website but also for an about page, or should it be?

Should it be about or about sharpen creative?

All right, so great question.

Google recently said something to this effect to remind us that it doesn’t really matter that much.

It probably mattered a lot more 10 years ago, when most websites had didn’t have the ability to put the keywords in the URL, but now that almost every content management system, especially WordPress makes it really easy to do this.

 It’s probably a lot lesser effector.

One thing that it is, it’s definitely more important to keep your url.

The same that it is to change it in order to add keywords.

I I saw a client one time every time they re optimize the page that change the url to something different.

Oh no.

Yeah it was bad and it may create a mess.

So if you’re building a new site, pardon me and you can be more helpful and descriptive.

I think that’s fine.

 If if you already have a page in your site,

Unless the page description is wrong for instance, a client sells offers courses for people learning different cyber security certifications.

 In every once in awhile, the certification SKU number for lack of a better word changes.

And so if the SKU number changed is no longer for this 501 course and now it’s 601.

Well then we probably need to change because it’s no longer the 501.

Now it’s a 601 but if it’s just the broad category of the course Security Plus is the name of the certification.

 We don’t need to change it because now it’s security+ 601 and it used to be Security Plus 500 won.

  So if you think long

  Long-term about your URLs to think and make it most accurate and Lasting the longest.

  It’s going to be better, even if it’s less keyword specific.

 So, you’re example.

For your about page you know about or about your company name, I’d almost say.

In that case, I would just keep it short and sweet and use about.

Because if someone ever Google’s about your company name,

you know, just by having that page, Google is going to serve your about page with even if it’s not in the URL.

Yeah, it probably a lot easier if it was just a simple URL about

          Then have to make people, put the whole brand name in.

Now, what?

Yeah, his style.

His question was about your url, having, like your keywords, okay?

Because a lot of things that I read, they mention like,

Even though you make your url short.

But also, make sure it

Has like a keyword in there for it to be easy to search.

So you’re saying it really doesn’t.

 Matter.

As long as your website has the right keywords within it.

I’m sitting it’s it’s it’s better if you can but it’s not the most important ranking Factor, okay?

So if we were trying to, if we’re trying to sell blue widgets

 In our website said, here’s the what’s McCall?

It’s in the URL said, whatchamacallits.

 But the page is about blue widgets.

Well, depends if we, if it’s already exist, we would have to make a decision on, whether it’s really worth changing the URL to Blue, widgets

Because the URLs currently whatchamacallits.

But if we’re thinking about designing a new site, then I would definitely take advantage of that opportunity and go ahead and change the url to Blue widgets. So it’s our descriptive, but I wouldn’t change an existing URL under most circumstances.

Okay.

But yeah, if you, but if it’s so this really involves planning to make sure it’s the most, your URLs have the most longevity because we don’t want to go changing them very often.

 And so if we’re adding new pages, the more we can think long-term and usually that means is Broad as possible.

 Right?

So we we don’t want to have very specific.

Be too specific where we might have to change it for example, security+ 501.

Okay, now they’ve changed the skew on the Security, Plus course, now it’s 601.

So now I got to change your ewell’s.

 Damn, it would just be much better to have Security, Plus, B, the URL.

 So then no matter what they change, 250 126 and 127, 012 909 or whatever, you know, fine, it’s still Security, Plus, is the URL.

Does that help it does?

Yeah, quite a bit on the blog example, like three ways to help blah blah blah, you know separated by dashes. Would it be better to just simplify that in some way and not have like the whole title of the blog post because some of the titles from some of the web’s I’m websites.

 I’m working with you know it can get kind of law.

Yeah.

So

That is a, I’m glad you’re asking Clarity on that because there’s a couple little tricks with this.

One.

Google used to consider certain words of a stop word, meaning it wouldn’t consider the word in the search query.

 So stop words might be the let the word tio2.

Would be a stop word, and I did used to be Google.

Wouldn’t even consider that word in the query.

So, there’s a feature within the yoast plugin that says, remove all stop words from my permalink,

And so that would truncate this URL to three ways, add value your website.

Okay, which consent condenses it.

 It’s not very readable, but you can kind of get the gist of it.

And that, so that’s more concise.

And Yost has the feature to do this.

 However, recent changes in, Google is the stop words, are almost more important than they ever were in the past and that Google is doing a much better job, understanding.

What the real question is and sometimes the distinction between queries is the stop words.

 So I would remove stop words from my page.

Let alone my URLs at that point.

However, there are other things to consider and I would prefer short URLs.

Every day of the week to very specific urls.

 If only just to keep things simple, I use active campaign for my email marketing and every once in a while I have a really, really young long URL.

And after active campaign ads, all its tracking code, in the end of the URL, the the server can, the page can even be served up.

 And so just to anticipate other conflicts to keep things, short is going to be in your best interest.

Yeah.

And WordPress makes it really easy when you’re adding a blog post, it will automatically take your title of your blog post and convert it into your permalink, but you can really easily change that and make it work in size.

  And if I know I’m going to have a very, very long permalink, I will sometimes make it a little more concise so your example, 3 ways to add value to your website,

 maybe you could consign, you know,

Shrink that to add value or ways to add value to your website.

And that is shorter.

 And also if you later go back and edit it and add a fourth, you don’t have to change your URL because, you know, ways to add value websites change, right?

I’m in this big project right now going through my website and going through updating all these old blog posts that are obsolete.

Yeah, you know, and if it’s three and now there’s four, I don’t really want to have to change more URL just because I added one.

Yeah, you know, so I’d / yeah but sometimes you can’t avoid it.

 So

  I we’re into really really minuscule SEO factors that aren’t the most important ranking factors.

So then that way, I’d say usability in Simplicity Will trump your SEO value all day long.

If as long as you have a keyword Focus, your title uses that keyword Focus you got a significant amount of content on your page.

 Those are the most important ranking factors in if you know the URLs in the page and stuff like that aren’t as important.

 So I would just keep it direct and simple as possible.

Awesome.

Can you repeat those three most important things for me?

 Well, I just kind of made them up.

 Yeah.

But what what he did are like the title of your post and I when I by title, I mean your title tag but also your H1 tag which is visible on

Paige.

 Sometimes I make the H1 in the title different just because I can.

 Yeah, but if if they’re the same, that’s okay.

Having a key.

Any focus on a page is huge help.

 So, just doing the research, understand that people are looking for.

This is a huge part of the SEO Factor.

 Otherwise, your ranking for things, people aren’t looking for, it’s not going to help.

And just having a large volume of content.

It’s not that Google says oh you have only 750 words, I’m not going to rank your page. Google isn’t looking for a keyword or a number of words but the longer your content is the more potential keywords for which it could serve your content for.

So just longer content does better simply because there’s more things for which it’s relevant.

41:01

So if you had a 300 word post, yeah, people could find that Google.

 Might serve a 300 word, blog post up in the search results.

 But what it for which it’s going to serve, it’s going to be really limited because it doesn’t say a lot.

Yeah, so longer is better, you know, and then after that okay, having some images are great, they’re for usability and as long as you’re putting images caption them, use an ALT tag.

 Heck, why not fight name them something relevant to what?

 You’re

not, it’s not too much trouble and you know that that is most of the battle, everything else, you know, page Fades factor to obviously

But once you’re getting all that stuff, you can just pretty much be okay with that.

Yeah.

What one of the processes in the game plan is do keyword research on a particular page and then create page.

 And in the prop in the keyword research process or sorry in the keyword research and optimize a page process.

 It says, two months later go back.

Check to make sure you pick the right keyword.

And then check to see if there’s other ways you can optimize your page.

 And I tried to outline that the documentation, because we’re doing a lot of conjecture when we first produce something.

It.

 Two months seems to be a good amount of time to give Google some time to find it.

 Read it, evaluate it.

 Decide if it wants to serve it up to users and then go and kind of re-optimize you might find there’s a better keyword than you originally realized.

And once you find there’s a better, keyword, you might then go and change around some things to make your site perform, even better for that keyword, then the word you originally picked.

Yeah.

So SEO in my mind is an ongoing process and repeating.

We’re not typically just we’ve SEO to it and we walked away.

Yeah.

Catch it.

Yeah that’s really helpful.

Okay good.

Good eye on the actual page on how to process and curious ants on how to optimize a page for SEO.

 I spend very little time

 I’m talking about.

all tags in file names, and that’s just because those things are not

the most important thing.

Who I’ll get into that. I haven’t gotten that far yet.

No, that’s all right on topic.

Yeah.

Good know.