When search engines begin to analyze a website, the first thing they look at is its URL structure. If what they see is confusing, they may end up indexing only a fraction of the site's pages, causing some of its content to go undiscovered in search. http://webmeup.com/blog/seo-url-structure.html

1. SEO-friendly URL structure
helping search engines make sense of your site

2. What will I learn by the last slide?
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Common URL structure problems you may
encounter
SEO-friendly URL structure best practices
Useful resources to help you along

3. Common URL structure problems
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Gibberish URLs
Multiple URLs pointing to homepage
Duplicate URLs caused by sorting options
Duplicate URLs caused by tracking parameters

4. Gibberish URLs
The URLs that don’t tell you much about the content
of the page, lack keywords and are rich in useless
characters.
Example:
http://rapidassisttech.com/shop/item.aspx?catid=23&i
temid=1068&color=456&ssid=109
Full post available at: http://webmeup.com/blog/seo-url-structure.html

5. Multiple URLs pointing to homepage
In this case the homepage of a website may be
reached via several paths. As the result the links’
strength is dissipated.
Example:
http://mydomain.com/
http://www.mydomain.com/
http://mydomain.com/index.html
Full post available at: http://webmeup.com/blog/seo-url-structure.html

6. Duplicate URLs caused by sorting
options
A product in an e-commerce store may belong to
various categories and as such be reached via different
URLs
Example:
Women -> Shop Brands -> Levi's -> Levi's Field Jacket
Women -> Jackets-> Levi's -> Levi's Field Jacket
Full post available at: http://webmeup.com/blog/seo-url-structure.html

7. Duplicate URLs caused by tracking
parameters
Some websites are using session ID parameters in
URLs to track their visitors. As the result, a page with
the same content may have different URLs.
Example:
http://mydomain.com/index.html?ssid=87658765gh
http://mydomain.com/index.html?ssid=87658765gh
Full post available at: http://webmeup.com/blog/seo-url-structure.html

8. SEO-friendly URL structure best
practices
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Sign up for Webmaster Tools
Create a robots.txt file
Submit an XML Sitemap
Make use of canonical tags
Full post available at: http://webmeup.com/blog/seo-url-structure.html

9. Sign up for Webmaster Tools
Both Google and Bing provide webmaster tools that
let you diagnose potential URL structure problems.
They may help:
• Track HTML errors
• Find duplicate content
• Find broken links
• Adjust URL parameters settings
• Set preferred page (www or non-www)
Full post available at: http://webmeup.com/blog/seo-url-structure.html

10. Create a robots.txt file
It's a text file that lists which pages or sections of your
site the crawler should NOT visit.
Example:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /~joe/
Full post available at: http://webmeup.com/blog/seo-url-structure.html

11. Submit an XML Sitemap
An XML Sitemap is a list of pages of your site that
should be to be crawled and indexed by the search
engines.
Example:
<urlset>
<url>
<loc>http://webmeup.com/</loc>
<priority>1</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://webmeup.com/getting-tarted.html</loc>
<priority>0.80</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
Full post available at: http://webmeup.com/blog/seo-url-structure.html

12. Make use of canonical tags
If multiple URLs point to the same content, canonical
tags are used to assign a primary page. The tag should
placed at non-primary pages.
Example:
<link rel="canonical"
href="http://www.example.com/product.php? "/>
Full post available at: http://webmeup.com/blog/seo-url-structure.html

13. Helpful resources
1. Learn to make pretty URLs:
httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/misc/rewriteguide.html
2. Webmasters tools:
www.google.com/webmasters/tools
www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
3. Robots.txt official page
www.robotstxt.org
4. Google comments about rel=canonical
support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en
Full post available at: http://webmeup.com/blog/seo-url-structure.html

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