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Website optimization can be affected by many different factors such as the design, how key information is included in the layout, and navigation structure to name a few. Of specific concern to e-commerce websites are all of the product pages that must be there, each with standard URLs that have been assigned according to a hosting platform's specifications; such URLs can drastically affect SEO as well as the ability to have prompt and accurate indexing. So it is important to understand how to change product page addresses to be more customized and unique because how this is achieved can greatly benefit an e-commerce website. Importance of Custom URLs For E-commerce When assigned automatically by host servers, URLs are usually a nonsensical gibberish that has no meaning to anything other than the hosting server and the business. More importantly, internet addresses such as these mean nothing in terms of SEO effort, keywords, or brand recognition – and especially are of no benefit to the search engines. When there are hundreds of items for sale on an internet location, easily finding individual products located in the search results can be difficult; in addition, the entire website suffers because of the slow indexing with these types of page labels. Since the goal of any website is to have the best chance of being seen by search engines with the widest variety of search terms, having product page URLs as a long string of random letters and numbers is totally detrimental to a business and any efforts regarding website optimization. Best Internet Address Structure The best way for companies to avoid a problem such as this is to change product page URLs to ones that have actual meaning, both to users and to web crawlers. Setting up products on an e-commerce website is definitely a time-consuming task; however, it is one that must be done in order to stay competitive and avoid losing out on sales because web pages are undecipherable with unrecognizable URLs and a total lack of optimization. The trick is to know how to create the best address possible. Ideally, a good product page URL should be as short as possible yet still be unique and name the selling item shown on that page. Through keyword research, it can be determined the most important key terms that relate to a selling item; that name should be included in the internet address. Additionally, specifics like color or size can be included, although sometimes this is optional as it can make a page address too long. In this case, product numbers can be substituted instead as long as there are other identifying keywords in the string of descriptors. As an example, here are two versions of a unique URL structure: sitename.com/product-category/product-keywords-size-color or if that is too long, try sitename.com/product-category/product-keyword-and-product-number. While these are only basic examples, hopefully the points of uniqueness, use of a good keyword, and the importance of keeping them fairly short is evident. Other tips for creating the best URL for product pages on an e-commerce site is to stick to all lowercase letters, avoid the use of punctuation and special characters, and replace spaces or underscores with hyphens instead. By forming URLs using the characteristics that are known to be more easily indexed and optimized, websites should realize better overall site efficiency and better search engine results rankings for selling items based on keyword searches. Businesses selling products and services on the internet have stiff competition, making every small effort toward optimization an important one. Assigning more search friendly, SEO friendly URLs to product pages is yet one more of those important considerations that can greatly affect brand recognition, organic traffic flow, and sales as an end result! Chris Hunter is an expert in Web Design and Search Engine Marketing. To find out more about Houston search engine optimization, go to the main website at: http://www.webunlimited.com.
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