What are Friendly URLs?
A friendly URL is a Web address that is easy to read and includes words that describe the content of the web page.
This type of URL can be "friendly" in two ways.
- It can help visitors remember the Web address, and
- It can help describe the page to search engines.
Friendly URLs that are short and easy to remember are considered "user-friendly URLs" and are a great Marketing tool. These URLs help visitors remember web addresses, which means they can revisit pages by simply typing in the URL address bar.
Choosing a Friendly URL
When choosing a friendly URL, you'll want to follow these tips:
- Use relevant and descriptive keywords - Do a keywords search before creating your URL.
- Use hyphens instead of underscores - Search engines often read words with underscores as one word.
- Keep it short - In addition to just being more convenient to type and remember, shorter URLs are less likely to be seen by search engines as keyword stuffing. Four to seven words is a good guideline to follow.
Remember, you're writing these URLs your users and the search engines your website and its pages more accurately.
Uses for Friendly URLs
- Redirecting people to a third level navigation: Your Suites page is buried under two layers of navigation so the URL is long and hard to remember, e.g. www.venue.com/plan-your-visit/preferred-seating/suites. Create the Friendly URL www.venue.com/suites to include on information materials.
- Linking to Hidden Pages: You have a page dedicated to volunteers, members, suite holders or other VIPs that is password protected and is hidden from the main navigation. Create the Friendly URL www.venue.com/volunteers and send it out to those individuals along with the password so they never have to struggle to find the link.
- Advertising an event: Similarly to our example above, you want to send out an ad to help support sales for a particular event. The URL for the event is http://www.venue.com/events/detail/eventname.
- http://www.venue.com/events/detail/eventname. Create the Friendly URL "www.venue.com/event" to make it easier to remember and look better on the ad.
Read our article, "Creating Friendly URLs in Showtime" to get started!