Your free guide to search engine optimization.
URLs and Targeted Keyword Phrases
Successfully attaining top rankings from a search engine strongly depends on the proper use of targeted keyword phrases throughout the website. Using targeted keyword phrases in a Webpage's URL can strongly increase the probability of achieving a top-ranking Web page in major search engines for that keyword phrase. In addition, the closer the keyword phrase appears to the main domain name (or root domain), the better a page should perform on the keyword phrase. This observation makes logical sense because users often hope to find those keyword phrases in the URLs.
For example, people often enter "white house" when looking for www.whitehouse.gov/. The targeted keyword phrase for a particular page should appear as far to the left in the URL as possible. Recommendations are the following:
- Shorter URLs rank better implicitly, so all URLs should be as short and concise as possible while still incorporating keyword phrases.
- As a best practice, keyword phrases should be separated by hyphens instead of underscores.
