SEO Friendly URL
The DCP Online Slug Generator is the best tool for webmasters to make SEO friendly URL from a text string.
Make URLs that are human-readable.
Enter a text String to generate an SEO Friendly URL
Step 1 - Enter your text string.
Step 2 - Select the blue "Convert" button.
Step 3 - Copy and use the SEO friendly URL.
Job Done! - Easy as 1 2 3.
SEO-friendly URLs are specially designed to include keywords within the URL, making it easier to rank in search engine results.
URL slugs that are optimised for SEO tend to be shorter contain keyword phrases.
SEO-friendly URLs are all easier for a user to type in and they normally contain an easy to understand format.
Both a website user and the search engines can use a URL to understand the content of a web page.
It is important that a URL is clear and easy to understand, as often we share web pages on social media that contains the link.
Making that link easy to read can help with more click-throughs to your website pages.
Note: It is also important to optimise your page title and meta description as well.
Google provides some useful information about URLs in their Google SEO starter guide.
In most cases, it is advisable to incorporate keyword phrases into your URLs.
Each page on your website can be used to target a specific set of keywords.
Here is an example of a non-friendly URL: https://www.dcpweb.co.uk/service1
Here is an example of an SEO friendly URL: https://www.dcpweb.co.uk/website-design
In the above URL, my target keyword is "Website Design".
This is the page title for the above website design URL: Website Design | Web Design Company | Best Website Design | DCP
Here is the meta description for the page: DCP Web Design Company | Get a free website design quote! - DCP Web Designers, best website design solutions - 0203 539 4415 | 07838 678 770 - Learn from our 15 years of web design knowledge and experience.
Ultimately our goal is to be consistent with the keywords we are using on our website page content, page title, image alt tags and meta descriptions.
Using hyphens in a URL is considered to be best practice and even stated by Google in their "keep a simple URL structure" documentation.
It is possible for URLs to contain both uppercase and lowercase characters.
I would always recommend where possible to use only lowercase characters in your URLs.
Some web servers will treat uppercase and lowercase URLs as different and may result in a 404 error.
Also, lowercase URLs are much easier to type into a web browser making them user-friendly.
This is one of the main reasons we use hyphens in URLs for word separation.
If you are using WordPress then you can select the "Post name" option which is located in the WordPress admin control panel.
Note: If you plan to change your URL structure on WordPress or any other website, then I would advise you to contact your web designers first and set up an action plan for 301 URL re-directs.
It has been common practice to use HTTPS URLs for some time.
HTTPS URLs are used for better security and can be created as default when you install an SSL Certificate.
Let's Encrypt offer free SSL certificates so there is no reason not to have SSL encrypted URLs running on your website.
Cpanel users can auto-install Let's Encrypt certificates for FREE and most hosting providers will offer a free SSL when signing up to a hosting solution with a domain name.
Google also states that "we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal".
Google and other search engine treat a subdomain as a separate website. For this reason, I would recommend using a subfolder structure that is more SEO friendly.
For example, my blog is located on the following URL: https://www.dcpweb.co.uk/blog
A subdomain would use a URL like this: https://blog.dcpweb.co.uk
As mentioned above the subdomain would be seen as a separate website by Google. It will have its own backlink profile and search ranking results.
It is better to have all the power of your content on the same domain, so using a subfolder structure will help you to achieve this.
Subfolder URLs also have a better structure.
Example blog post from my website: https://www.dcpweb.co.uk/blog/30-essential-tips-for-improving-your-web-design
The blog post URL above contains 3 key elements:
Here is the Google search engine result for the above blog post:
As you can see in the above image, Google has auto-generated a breadcrumb trail based on the URL structure.
A URL is a full path to a website domain or specific content. For example, the URL to my contact page is: https://www.dcpweb.co.uk/contact
The slug is the content after the domain name. For example, in the contact URL above the slug is "contact".
Think of the URL as the full path to a specific piece of content on your website and the slug as the content after the domain name.