The URL or Uniform Resource Locater is a website’s domain name (http://www.boomyeah.com/). It is imperative to use keywords in your website’s URL in order to inform search engines what a page is about and to help a searcher obtain information about your website’s content.
The five main things to remember when choosing an URL are as follows:
- Ensure that the URL of each page is consistent with the subject matter presented on that page
- When you change a previous URL, you must update all your links accordingly by inserting a 301 redirect
- Always be sure to include pertinent and precise keywords as a part of your URL
- Be as concise as possible by limiting the number of folders deep, trailing slashes and the amount of characters
- Make your URL memorable and catchy
What is a 301 redirect? A 301 redirect allows users to be automatically directed from one webpage to another. A webmaster implants one of these in order to send the current URLs to the optimized URLs when a page:
*Moves to a different URL
*Is united with another page
*Is deleted (redirect still locates a page that is present)
A 301 redirect can be implemented through your hosts’ control panel, your .htaccess file (be sure to upload in ascii mode) or through server-side scripting. It is imperative to test your server’s response headers every time you execute an alteration to your htaccess file. Detailed instructions for implementing a 301 redirect can be found at Speedwagon.