Over the past few years, SEO professionals have suggested that website owners change their URLs so that they contain keywords. This is suggested for a couple of different reasons and here we will explore both of them. We will also explore whether or not it is really necessary.
From a user perspective, if the URL’s have keywords in them, it just looks cleaner. If your URL is quite long and are made up of a bunch of words and symbols that are not relevant to what the user is seeing or reading, it can look messy and out of place. When you are thinking about clean web page design that is user friendly, it is not a bad idea to have the URLs be just as clean and user friendly as the rest of the website.
In regards to the search engines, they can use algorithms which can break apart URL’s and find keywords. A search engine is going to break apart the website to try and figure out what the website is about. If the keywords which are contained in the content of the website are also used in the website’s URL, the search engine may get a better idea of what the website is about.
Those are the two main reasons why changing your URLs so that they contain keywords is recommended. With this in mind though, is it really necessary? If you are going through a website redesign, it would not be a bad idea at this point. It is the easiest to change the URLs when a website is being designed or redesigned.
They should also be changed to contain keywords if the URLs are unattractive or do not make any sense in reference to your website’s content. For example, if your website is about flowers but your URL contains the words “my-favorite-page”, this confuses the user and the search engines.
While it is not required, it can help your search engine rankings by making it easier for the search engine crawlers to understand what your website is about. Containing keywords in your URLs is also more appealing to Internet users.