As competition gets cut-throat on search engines, every website is struggling to get in front of its target audience and showcase its brand value. This is where search engine optimization plays an integral role, helping improve a website’s search engine ranking and gaining more visibility. However, search engine algorithms are fast-evolving and you need to keep pace with the latest SEO tactics that can help rank your website.
One such important element of search engine optimization is “permalink.” It can significantly influence how your visitors and search engines discover content on your website – a crucial factor influencing better indexing and higher rankings on Search Engine Result Pages. So, let’s understand what it is and why it is important for SEO.
What is Permalink?
To put it simply, a permalink (permanent link) is a web page URL that is not intended to change over time on your website. It consists of two parts – the domain (www.businessname.com) and a slug (for instance, /blog/). A slug is a piece of the website URL that appears after the domain name. A simple but effective permalink makes the URL easy to understand and index by search engines.
It gives your website a structure, which can help it to get found on search engines. The type of permalink you choose also plays an important role in improving its shareability. After all, an URL with loads of gibberish and incomprehensible terms is a lot less enticing and shareable than a short and crisp SEO-friendly URL.
Some examples are given below:
- https://www.businessname.com/blog/
- https://www.businessname.com/about/
SEO friendly permalinks tips:
- Separated by dashes '-'
- Use lowercase
- Don't add stop words (a, the, on, and, of, etc.)
- Start with HTTPS
- Short and descriptive
Benefits of Using Permalink for Your SEO
There are several reasons why it is an integral element of search engine optimization:
- Permalink allows you to create easy-to-comprehend URL structures that make it simpler for your website visitors to understand and share a web page, blog post, etc. Just by looking at the URL, they can understand what the page is all about.
- It plays a crucial role in improving your website’s search engine visibility. Search engines like Google use these elements (in addition to other SEO factors) to index content on your website. Search engine algorithms are not designed to read the entire content on a page to comprehend what it is all about. They take cues from the URL structure, alt tag, title tag, meta description, keywords, etc.
Hence, the permalink should be short, precise, and most importantly, SEO-friendly. It is a good idea to include keywords in the permalink of your web page, article, blog, etc. because it makes it easier for search engine algorithms to index the page and make it rank for related search queries.
- It helps improve the shareability of the content. Not only can your website visitors easily share the content, but you can even share the content on social media channels due to easy readability.
- A permalink that is simple, straightforward, and easy to understand allows other websites to point to you and link back. This is another vital ranking factor that influences your position in search engine result pages.
The potential of permalinks improving your search engine rankings and visibility is huge. But for effective results, make sure you pick the structure wisely and keep it simple, comprehensible, and easy to share.
