Tag: URL

What is a permalink?

Edwin Toonen

The permalink is the full URL you see – and use – for any given post, page or other pieces of content on your site. It’s a permanent link, hence the name permalink. A permalink could include your domain name (www.yoast.com) plus what’s called a slug, the piece of the URL that comes after the domain name. This might include a date or a category or anything you please. A simple permalink makes a URL easy to understand and share. In this SEO basics article, we’ll take a closer look at the permalink.

Permalinks should be SEO-friendly

Permalinks are an important part of your site as both search engines and visitors use these URLs to index and visit your site. The type of permalink you pick influences the way these two parties see and value your site. A URL with a load of incomprehensible gibberish at the end is a lot less shareable and enticing than a short and simple SEO-friendly URL. An example permalink could be:

https://www.yoast.com/category/post-name

It could also be something like:

https://www.yoast.com/10/10/2017/post-name

or

https://yoast.com/post-name

By default, WordPress uses a permalink structure that’s not SEO-friendly. These look something like this:

https://yoast.com/?p=101

The number you see is the ID WordPress had in mind for this particular article. It’s article number 101 in the database of your site. While Google still understands the content on that page, a URL like this does nothing for your SEO. It does not describe what kind of content the page offers and it’s not something that users are inclined to share. And did we mention that it’s not very professional looking? If your URL contains relevant words, this provides users and search engines with more information about the page than any ID or parameter would.

permalink common settings
Common permalink settings in WordPress

Considerations for your permalinks

Make sure you pick a permalink structure that fits your goals. If you have a news site, it might make sense to add the publication date of the article to the URL. If, however, you are planning to write killer cornerstone content that has to stand the test of time, it’s not recommended to use a date in the URL as this could make the content look ‘old’.

We recommend using a simple and clear permalink structure. For most sites, it makes sense to append the post name to the domain name. So in WordPress that would be the /postname/ option. In some cases, a category will help create a hierarchy in the URLs. Keep in mind that this could also result in too long URLs.

Yoast SEO and permalinks

Yoast SEO is a must-have tool that makes SEO available to everyone. It’s an easy to use tool that helps you make a perfect website. For instance, if you install WordPress and don’t change the default permalink settings, Yoast SEO will urge you to change it. Yoast SEO has several other options that can help you clean up those permalinks, like stripping the category base (usually category).

If you’re changing a permalink or deleting a page, we prevent users from landing on a 404 error page. Yoast SEO Premium has a brilliant redirect manager that helps you do that. It will create a 301 redirect automatically if you change the permalink of a page. In addition to that, it asks if you’d like to create a 301 redirect if you delete a page. Just enter the URL you want your visitors to go to and you’re done!

Finally, a word of warning

Pick your permalink structure wisely. Don’t change your permalink structure for the sake of it. Incorrectly redirecting your old URLs to the new URLs might lead to problems and could get you dropped from the rankings. Please think about your permalink structure before launching your site. Should you need to change your permalinks you can find more information on how to change your permalink structure or visit Google’s page on moving your site.

Read more: Why every website needs Yoast SEO »

The post What is a permalink? appeared first on Yoast.

Domain names and their influence on SEO

Michiel Heijmans

We often get questions from people asking about the influence of domain names on SEO. Is there any relation at all? Does it help to include keywords like product names in your domain name? Is the influence of domain names different per location? And what’s the use of using more than one domain name for a site? In this article, I’ll answer all these questions and more.

What’s a domain name?

Let’s start at the very beginning. A domain name is an alias. It’s a convenient way to point people to that specific spot on the internet where you’ve built your website. Domain names are, generally, used to identify one or more IP addresses. So for us, that domain name is yoast.com. When we are talking about www.yoast.com, which we rarely do, the domain name is yoast.com and the subdomain is www.

Note that I deliberately included “.com” here, were others might disagree with that. In my opinion, most common uses of the word “domain name” include that top-level domain. 

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Top-level domain (TLD)

Where “yoast” is obviously our brand, the .com bit of our domain name is called TLD (or top-level domain). In the early days of the internet:

  • .com was intended for US companies,
  • .org for non-profit organizations,
  • .edu for schools and universities and
  • .gov for government websites.

We’re talking 1985. Things have changed quite a bit. For the Netherlands, we use .nl, but lots of companies are using .com instead, for instance, when the .nl domain name they wanted was already taken. Things have gotten quite blurry. These days, TLDs like .guru and .pro are available. Automattic bought .blog a while back. And what about .pizza? We call these kind of TLDs generic TLDs.

Country code TLD (ccTLD)

I’ve already mentioned the .nl TLD. We call these kinds of TLDs country code or country specific TLDs. Years ago, Tokelau – an island in the Southern Pacific Ocean – started giving away their .tk TLD for free, and thousands of enthusiasts claimed their .tk. If I would have claimed michiel.tk, there would have probably been nobody in Tokelau who could have pronounced my domain name well. It’s like .cc, which you might have heard of, because it was once promoted as the alternative to .com. It’s actually a country specific TLD belonging to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, although the people of Cypres might disagree.

This brings me to the first statement about domain names and SEO:

ccTLD or subdirectory?

If your website is available in multiple languages, you might be wondering what the best solution is: domain.com/uk/ and domain.com/de/ (subdirectories or subfolders) or domain.co.uk and domain.de (ccTLDs).

For SEO, the subdirectory makes more sense. If you use a subdirectory, all links will go to the same domain. Marketing is easy because you have one main domain. If there are language differences per subdirectory, use hreflang to tell Google about that. If you include all in one (WordPress) install, maintenance is easier. Just to name a few advantages.

Note that a subdomain, like the “www” I mentioned, is something totally different than a subdirectory. Google actually considers kb.yoast.com to be a different website than yoast.com, even though I’m sure they can connect the dots.

Age of a domain

These days, the age of a domain – referring to how long your domain already exists – doesn’t matter as much as it did before. It’s much more about the content, the site structure and basically how well your website answers the query people used in Google. To become the best result and rank top 3 for a query, you’ll have to be the best result.

As a matter of fact, John Mueller of Google confirmed just a few weeks ago that domain age doesn’t matter:

Is it that black and white? No, it’s not. Domain age as such might not influence ranking, but older domains probably have a nice amount of backlinks, pages in the search result pages etc. And obviously, that might influence ranking.

Exact Match Domain (EMD)

BuyCheapHomes.com is probably an existing domain name. This is an example of an Exact Match Domain name. In 2012, Google introduced what we now call the EMD Update. Google changed it’s algorithm, so websites that used domain names like that wouldn’t rank just for the simple fact that the keyword was in the domain name. And yes, that used to be the case, before the update.

So, after this update, does it still pay off to use a domain name that includes a keyword? Only if the rest of your website adds up. Homes.com works pretty well :) And in the Netherlands, the Dutch equivalent of cheaploans.com, goedkopeleningen.nl, probably gets a decent amount of traffic. But that’s because Google is better in English than Dutch (but catching up on that).

My advice: if you managed to build a brand around that EMD, and you still get lots of traffic, keep up the good work. If your money is still on BuyCheapHomes, please make sure your branding is absolutely top notch. You’re in the hen house and a fox might be near.

More on EMD in Moz’s The Exact Match Domain Playbook: A Guide and Best Practices for EMDs.

Branding

Following the EMD update, branding became even more important. It makes so much more sense to focus on your brand in SEO and your domain name – as opposed to just putting a keyword in the domain name – that a brand name would really be my first choice for a domain name. LEGO.com, Amazon.com, Google.com. It’s all about the brand. It’s something people will remember easily and something that will make you stand out from the crowd and competition. Your brand is here to stay (always look on the positive side of things).

Make sure your brand is unique and the right domain name is available when starting a new business. By the way, this might be the reason to claim yoast.de even if you’re mainly using yoast.com – just to make sure no one else claims it ;)

By the way, I mentioned that a (known) brand is usually easier to remember. For the same reason, I’d prefer a short domain name over a domain name like this. Pi.com was probably already taken.

Read more: ‘5 tips on branding’ »

More than one domain name for the same website

Does it pay off to claim multiple domain names and 301 redirect all the domains to the main domain name? In terms of branding: no. In terms of online ranking: probably not. The only valid reason I can think of to actively use multiple domain names for the same website, is offline and sometimes online marketing. If you have a specific project or campaign on your website that you’d like to promote separately, a second domain name might come in handy to get traffic straight to the right page on your website.

“Actively” is the main word in that last paragraph. As mentioned, feel free to register multiple domain names, just make sure not to confuse Google. Besides that, actively using multiple domain names for the same website will diffuse the links to your website. And that isn’t what you want, as mentioned at the subdirectory section as well. 

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Domain Authority (DA)

I feel I have to mention domain authority here as well, as you hear a lot about it nowadays. Domain Authority is a score that predicts how well your website will rank on the search results pages. It’s based on data from the Mozscape web index and includes link counts, MozRank and MozTrust scores, and dozens of other factors (more than 40 in total). Source: Moz.com. It’s Moz-specific, so if you are using Moz, go check it out. And if you are a heavy user of domain authority, please elaborate why in the comments, as it’s not a metric I use, to be honest :)

Keep reading: ‘SEO friendly URLs’ »

The perfect WordPress SEO permalink structure

Joost de Valk

In the past we received a lot questions regarding optimizing your WordPress SEO URL / permalink structure. Questions ranging from whether you should have the category in your permalink structure to the length of your slugs. In this post, we’ll address some of these questions and attempt to give you a better understanding of your permalink structure.

The ideal WordPress SEO URL structure

At Yoast, we recommend using a simple and clear permalink structure. Ending your URL with the post name is the preferred method and optionally you can prefix the post name with the category, which results in one of the two following permalink structures:

/%postname%/

And with the category prefixed:

/%category%/%postname%/

For an added bonus, we recommend adding your main keyword somewhere in the post’s name. When checking out the snippet preview in our plugin, you’ll see your keyword emphasized in the URL if it’s been detected in your slug (see image below).

What about using dates?

Using dates in your URL never had many benefits. When you add dates to your permalink structure, you automatically ‘date’ your posts. People will naturally look for posts with a more recent date, assuming that they contain the best information. However, sometimes older post can hold very valuable information, but won’t get the same amount of clicks due to their age.

Should I use the category in my permalink structure?

If your domain name is nice and short and you use short, yet descriptive category names, you can easily include a category in your permalink structure which can benefit your website, but beware: if you end up with a lengthy slug and category name, it will make sharing the URL more difficult and won’t have much added value in Google.

If you decide to use categories in your permalink structure, make sure that you only select one category per post. For some more information regarding using categories in your permalink structure, I advise you to watch the following video by Matt Cutts.

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Should I add .html to my permalink structure?

In terms of SEO and ranking, there is little benefit to keeping the .html extension present in your URLs. However, in the video below, Matt explains that there might be some other advantages to keeping the file extensions present in your permalink structure.

The discussion whether or not you should forcibly add .html (or any other extension) can be ended very quickly: Don’t do it. It won’t help you and if you add certain extensions such as .exe, it can actually hurt your rankings.

My blog is in Google News. Don’t I need numbers in the URL?

The short answer here is: no. Back in the day, Google News required you to use a three digit number in your URLs in order to be included in the News index. A way around this was to have a separate XML sitemap. However, since September 2015, both the three digit unique number and XML sitemap are no longer required.

Should my focus keyword always be the first keyword in the URL?

It might help slightly, but if your focus keyword is present in the first few words, you’ll be fine. Matt explains this at great length in the following video.

How many words should I use in my slug?

In this interview with Matt Cutts, Matt mentions the following regarding the length of your slug:

If you can make your title four- or five-words long – and it is pretty natural. If you have got a three, four or five words in your URL, that can be perfectly normal. As it gets a little longer, then it starts to look a little worse. Now, our algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.

Should you change your URL structure for better SEO?

You might expect that the answer to this question would be a simple yes. However, if you’ve been blogging for a while, you might not want to make any drastic decisions. Have you been using dates in your permalink structure for the past few years? Then it might be wise to not switch to a structure without them. If you only just started then switching won’t cause you much harm and might even be a huge beneficial step.
However, if you’re still using the “old style” urls (?p=) then it’d be wise to switch regardless of how long you’ve been blogging. This will greatly improve your blog’s potential to be found in Google’s search results.

If you do decide to get rid of dates in your permalink structure, you can add the following redirect to your .htaccess file (if you’re on Apache) to ensure that the old URL (/yyyy/mm/dd/%postname%/) points to the new one:

RedirectMatch 301 /d{4}/d{2}/d{2}/(.*) https://yoast.com/$1

For Nginx, you can use the following snippet in your site configuration:

location ~ /d{4}/d{2}/d{2}/(.*) {
rewrite ^(.*)$ https://yoast.com/$1 permanent;
}

The perfect WordPress SEO URL

Overall, permalink structures won’t differ much from website to website if done correctly. We advise that you make sure your permalink structure is properly set before avidly writing posts. If you do decide to change your permalink structure over time, make sure you properly redirect users from the old structure to the new one.

Read more: ‘How to change your WordPress permalink structure’ »

How to remove www from your URL

Jimmy Comack

At Yoast, we sometimes receive the question how to remove www from your website’s URL – or add it. In this post, I’ll show you how you can enforce either a www or non-www URL by tweaking your .htaccess file (or nginx.conf if you’re running on an Nginx server).

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Does using one or the other impact SEO?

You might be wondering if using one or the other will have an impact on your SEO. The answer is: no. It’s really just a matter of preference/esthetics. Just make sure you properly add the www and non-www domains in Google Search Console, as described here, to ensure Google can properly index your website.

Removing www from your domain name

If you prefer to market your website without the www prefix, you can add the following lines to your .htaccess file (Apache only):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Restart Apache and check that you get redirected to the non-www version when using the www prefixed URL.

Note that Apache’s mod_rewrite module needs to be enabled. Otherwise, the above snippet won’t work.

Now, in Nginx this snippet is a bit different, but yields the exact same result when placed in the proper configuration file (which depends on your setup):

server {
 server_name www.example.com;
 return 301 http://example.com$request_uri;
}

Now just restart Nginx and you should be good to go!

Adding the www instead of removing it

To do the opposite of the previous section, add the following code to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$ 
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com$1 [R=301]

And in Nginx, all it takes is this:

server {
 server_name example.com;
 return 301 http://www.example.com$request_uri;
}

That’s all there is to it!

Read more: ‘Ask Yoast: www and duplicate content’ »

Ask Yoast: can I cancel a 301 or 410 redirect?

Joost de Valk

After creating a redirect, it might happen you’d like to use the URL of that post or page again. Or perhaps you decide that you’d like to cancel that redirect after some time. Reasons for this could be that redirecting that post or page was a mistake, or the post or page contains valuable content again. In this case you might ask yourself: is it possible to use this URL again, while it has been redirected? I’ll explain whether that’s possible and what’s important to consider when doing so!

In this Ask Yoast we received a question from Ahmed M Hassan:

“If I want to use a link that had been 301 or 410 redirected before, can I cancel the redirection and use it again?”

Check out the video or read the answer below!

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Can I cancel redirects?

Read this transcript to learn more about cancelling redirects:

“Yes, you can. What I would do, when canceling a redirect, is a Fetch and Render from Google Search Console to that URL and then submit to index, so Google knows that that URL now has content again. Otherwise, it can take months or even years for Google to come back to that URL, because it assumes you’ve redirected or deleted it. So use Fetch and Render for that and get those old URLs back in if you really need to. If you need to do this a lot, you need to think about your redirection strategy and whether you’re redirecting too quickly though.

Good luck!”

Example of Fetch and Render in Google Search Console:
search_console_-_fetch_as_google_-_https___yoast_com_

Ask Yoast

In the series Ask Yoast we answer SEO questions from followers! Need help with SEO? Let us help you out! Send your question to ask@yoast.com.

Read on: ‘Google Search Console: crawl’ »

Ask Yoast: change URLs when relaunching website?

Joost de Valk

Relaunching a website can be an overwhelming project. You need a new design and perhaps new functionalities. What should you do with your existing content? And what about new content? The more changes you want, the more challenging it gets. In this process you might face the question if you should change or keep your URLs. We hope to help to make your relaunch a bit easier by answering this question!

At Ask Yoast we received the following question, from Taisia Fredrickson:

“We want to change the titles of all of our products as we are relaunching our website and adding new products. Could we do this, but keep the same slug/URL? We would have to redirect our complete product catalog (which is massive) in order to change the URLs, from what our developer says.

Check out the video or read the answer below!

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Change URLs during relaunch or not

Read the transcript of the video to learn more:

“I would always, if you can, keep the URLs exactly the way the are. Even if you’re changing the names of your products. Only if it’s really weird for people, then I would change them on a product by product basis. But if you can, keep the URLS the same, so you don’t have to redirect them. Because people will have links pointing to these existing URLs. Redirection can always cause errors, because you can make a mistake somewhere, or you might lose stuff. So if you can prevent having to redirect it all, I would not redirect.

Good luck!”

Ask Yoast

Not sure how to solve an SEO issue on your site? Get help by asking your question to Ask Yoast! n the series we answer SEO questions from followers! Need help with SEO? Send your question to ask@yoast.com.

Read more: ‘SEO friendly URLs’ »

How to change your WordPress permalink structure

Joost de Valk

At Yoast, whenever we do a website review, we frequently recommend people change their permalink structure. In this post, we’ll explain why you should consider changing your permalink structure and how to go about it.

Why change your WordPress permalink structure?

A common thing we see in permalink structures are the usage of dates. For websites that post content that is related to current events, such as news sites, this makes perfect sense. However, for most blogs, the content is usually “timeless” as it tends to cover subjects that doesn’t relate to a specific date in time.

Using dates in your permalink structure also tends to have another side-effect, namely a lower CTR for older posts that may very well still be relevant. Whenever someone sees a result in Google with a date pointing back two years ago, they’ll be less likely to click that result. Seeing as Google uses this CTR for page rankings, it might be a very good idea to change your permalink structure to something more appealing to your visitors! If you want more information, you should read our post on WordPress SEO URL / Permalink considerations.

Get the most out of Yoast SEO, learn every feature and best practice in our Yoast SEO for WordPress training! »

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Changing WordPress permalink structure

There are two steps in changing your WordPress permalink structure. The first step is easy: go to Settings -> Permalinks and select Post name:

Changing your permalink settings

But what about all those old posts that still have dates in their permalink? With this handy tool, you can easily have a redirect generated that can be placed in your .htaccess file. This will point posts using the old permalink structure, to the new one. 

Please note that the tool currently only supports Apache-based servers and not Nginx.

After copying the redirect over to your .htaccess file, you should go out and test if everything is working properly. If the redirect doesn’t seem to be working, it could mean that you’re not allowed to use RedirectMatch on your Apache server.

If you don’t have proper rights to edit your .htaccess file or can’t use RedirectMatch, you can also consider using our Yoast SEO Premium plugin. The built-in Redirect Manager will automatically create a redirect for you whenever you alter the permalink of a post to reflect the newly chosen structure.

Read more: ‘WordPress SEO: the ultimate tutorial’ »

What is a slug and how to optimize it?

Michiel Heijmans

In SEO, we often talk about creating the right slug for a page. Of course, we’re not talking about the slimy creature that eats your plants. So, what is this ‘slug’, then? And why should you optimize it? In this post, we’ll explain all you need to know about it.

What is a slug?

A slug is the part of a URL which identifies a particular page on a website in an easy to read form. In other words, it’s the part of the URL that explains the page’s content. For this article, for example, the URL is https://yoast.com/slug, and the slug simply is ‘slug’.

Here’s how Joost explained slugs in an Ask Yoast video:

WordPress slugs

In WordPress, the slug is the part of your URL that you can edit when writing a new post. Note that this only works with the right permalink settings. Editing your slug in WordPress looks like this:

editing your slug in WordPress

Things like the date or category name that are sometimes included in URLs, aren’t part of the slug. And if you have added more variables to your URL, the slug is still just that editable part of the URL to the page, like this:

slug-ocw

There’s an additional value at the end of that URL. In this case, that extra variable is used so slugs can be the same without the URL being the same.

Slugs and SEO

Writing a good slug for your page or post can positively affect your SEO. It allows you to do the following things:

Include your keyword in the slug

The main SEO benefit of a slug is that you can change the words to make sure that it has the words that you really want to rank for. It’s one of the indicators Google uses to determine what a page is about.

Create user friendly URLs

The URL is also one of the things that people see in the search results. Picture a results page: you’ll see many different URLs about a certain topic, right? So you need to make sure your slug is in line with what people expect to see. For example, our main article on WordPress SEO has the URL yoast.com/wordpress-seo, which is very on point. People are a lot more likely to click on that, than on yoast.com/?P=613458, even though that’s the slug that WordPress creates by default.

Find out more about creating SEO-friendly URLs »

How to optimize your slug

What are the things you need to think of when constructing the right slug for your post or page? Let’s go over four steps of optimizing your slug:


  1.

    Include your keyword in the slug
    This is probably a no-brainer, but for the record: your keyphrase should be in the slug. It has to make clear what your page is about immediately.
    The SEO analysis in the Yoast plugin will show this message if your keyphrase isn’t in the slug:The 'keyphrase in slug' notification in the Yoast plugin

  2. Think about function words

    The slug that’s generated by default may include function words like “a”, “the” and “and” and similar words. In some cases, you might need those in the slug to clarify what your page is about, but usually, you can leave them out. We have written a tad bit more on these words in our WordPress SEO article.Slug without function words

  3. Add focus

    Don’t just filter out unnecessary function words, but really all the words that you don’t need. In the case of this post, WordPress automatically created the slug “what-s-a-slug-and-how-to-optimize-it” (based upon the permalink settings in WordPress). That’s quite long, so I manually reduced it to “slug”. Make sure the slug still makes sense, though.

    There is one thing to keep in mind here. You can use a slug only once, so you should use it for the right page. For example: the slug for this article is ‘slug’, which is very specific. Now, we’re not going to write another article with “Slug” as a topic. This informative article is the central point for information about slugs on our website. But if this were just an additional post, and we were planning to write a main article later, we’d have a problem. You’ll understand why: because the slug “slug” would already be taken. So, do consider the page’s level or position on your website.Reduced amount of words so slug is more focused

  4. Keep it short and descriptive

    The URL of your page is shown in Google search results. Not always, sometimes it’s for instance replaced with breadcrumbs (awesome). Don’t include too much information if you intend to reuse the URL for article updates. Be careful adding dates and such to your slug, as these will instantly give away when content was originally published.
    For example: in the image, you can see an article the title mentions 2018, but the slug doesn’t. That makes for easy updating so the article is still valid in 2019 and on!
    Another reason to keep if concise: a short slug, that comes right after the domain, allows Google to show keywords in its mobile search result pages as well.techradar mindmap slug

A word of warning: it’s best to take these steps before publishing your post. If you think of a better slug after publishing your post, it may be tempting to change it. It’s just so easy, right? But beware: doing this means changing the URL and to avoid 404 errors, you’ll need a redirect. If that’s a problem, check out the redirect manager in Yoast SEO premium. It’ll instantly pop up so you can easily create one!

Conclusion: Your site needs good slugs

There it is! Now, you know what a slug is and what it can do to help your SEO. So, from now on, optimize your slugs with these four things in mind!

Read more: SEO basics: what does Google do? »

The post What is a slug and how to optimize it? appeared first on Yoast.