Optimizing your URL and Links (Part 1)

If you want to really do Search Engine Optimization one of the things you should never ever forget to optimize are your website’s URL as well as the links within each page. Here are some tips from Rick Dejarnette of Bing Webmaster Center that should help you optimize your URLs and links.

1. Canonicalize your URL – Use the canonical tag to let search engines know which version of the URL, for pages with multiple URLs, they should consider to be the authoritative or original URL. Here’s how to use the canonical tag:

2. Choose absolute links over relative links – Rick Dejarnette tells us that the use of an entire URL (absolute link) as opposed to a file address will reinforce the canonicalization as well as focus the link juice to your preferred URL.

3. Use proper URL syntax in the anchor tag – According to Mr. Dejarnette you should follow the standard formats listed below:

• For URLs that point to the default or index file of a directory, omit the default file name and instead end the URL with a folder name, always followed by the trailing “/” (as in href=”http://www.mysite.com/”>http://www.mysite.com/). This is even true for default file name URLs that use dynamic parameters (as in http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx?var=1)
• For URLs that are not the default file for a folder, it is fine to include the file name in the full URL, even if there is no dynamic parameter (as in http://www.mysite.com/article.htm)
• For URLs that include ampersands (typically used between sets of dynamic attributes), substitute the equivalent escape code & for the single ampersand character (&) to enable the page to pass HTML validation checks (as in http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx?var=1&var=2)

More on URL/links optimization next time…

By Sparky in Hyperlinks, Linking, Tips

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