A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a reference to an object or resource on the internet. Every post or page you create on your website can be found on (at least) one URL. For web pages it usually consists of a protocol identifier (eg. HTTPS), the domain name (eg. example.com) and a path (eg. /something/).
There are various ways to optimize your URLs for SEO and user friendliness. We regularly write about stuff related to URLs, like creating SEO-friendly URLs and slugs, changing WordPress permalinks, or how to implement canonical URLs on your site. Check out the posts on this page to learn all about best practices for URLs.
Getting rid of the www in your URL, or instead adding it, is quite easy, this is a simple explanation of how to do it.
This post discusses the perfect WordPress SEO URL, and explains why it is important. It also covers questions on performance and migration.
Ever wondered how to create SEO-friendly URLs? This post explains how to create that URL for what type of website. Find out more!
In this post, we'll explain what a slug is and how you can use it the best possible way. In WordPress, it's really easy to optimize!
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. It could include your domain name (www.yoast.com) plus what’s called a slug, the piece of the URL that comes after the domain …
Read: "What is a permalink?"
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. Having an orange or red …
Read: "What is a slug and how to optimize it?"
The subject is up for much discussion: SEO-friendly URLs. Should or shouldn’t I include the category? Should the URL be as short as possible or is there room for extras? Could an URL be stuffed with keywords or not? In this post, I’ll explain our take on SEO-friendly URLs and try to elaborate a bit …
Read: "SEO-friendly URLs"
Today’s Ask Yoast will discuss a problem that may be familiar to you if your site is in a non-ASCII language, like Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and many other languages. You work hard to write good, SEO-friendly URLs, so people will click to your website. However, when your site is linked to or shared, for instance …
Read: "Bad slug for Arabic URLs"It’s important to put some thought into your URL structure, particularly when you’re starting a new website. If you make sure your URL structure is clear and focused right from the beginning, you won’t have to face the huge task of changing and redirecting all your URLs later on. But, of course, sometimes you need …
Read: "Order of categories and subcategories in URLs"There could be a reason why you’d want to switch your top-level domain (TLD) at some point. Perhaps you want to use it in your brand name, or maybe you just want something that catches the eye a bit more. But what if your site isn’t performing as well as you thought it would after …
Read: "Switching the TLD of your website"If you started your website as a newbie to all things internet, chances are that your site’s URLs aren’t pretty. Perhaps the URLs contain the post-ID, or the date when it was first published. Those aren’t SEO-friendly URLs: they don’t say much about the content of a page and look cluttered. If you want to …
Read: "Changing URL structure and rankings"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? …
Read: "Domain names and their influence on SEO"
In the past, we received a lot of 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 …
Read: "The perfect WordPress SEO permalink structure"
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). Does using one or the other …
Read: "How to remove www from your URL"