How to Write an SEO Friendly URL

The URL – Uniform Resource Locator – or address for your web page, is a key “on-page” SEO element. It is one of your primary opportunities to tell the search engines what your web page is about.
Although the URL is made up of several components, it is the subdirectory or path that I want to focus on.
i.e. http://www.EchelonSEO.com/subdirectory/
The subdirectory should be the “name”, based on keywords, for that individual page, and should be closely related to the primary Title Tag for the page.
i.e. http://www.EchelonSEO.com/how-to-write-a-url/

URL Parameters
In order to be optimized for search, subdirectories should contain your keywords, be no longer than 3-5 words and should be separated by a hyphen (NOT an underscore).
i.e. http://www.EchelonSEO/search-engine-optimization/

WordPress URL SEO
For search purposes, set your WordPress blog so that your default URL subdirectory is the title of your post
i.e. http://www.EchelonSEO/how-to-write-an-seo-friendly-url
If your current default settings result in a URL that looks like one of these . . .

• http://blog.echelonseo.com/?p=123
• http://blog.echelonseo.com/2013/24/02/how-to-write-an-seo-friendly-url/
• http://blog.echelonseo.com/2013/02/how-to-write-an-seo-friendly-url/
• http://blog.echelosnseo.com/archives/123

. . . go to your WordPress dashboard and click on SETTINGS >>> PERMALINKS >>> and the POST NAME radio button.


Although it doesn’t affect your SEO, I would recommend not including the date of your post in your URL – it ages it in the eye of your reader, making them less likely to read, as you get further away from the publishing date.
If you want to customize the default URL – it may be too long (like mine) – you can click on the URL “Edit” button . . .


. . . and customize your URL. In this example, I could change it as follows:
http://blog.echelonseo.com/write-an-seo-friendly-url
The URL is a simple, but important element of “on-page” SEO. As a bonus, an optimized URL is also usually much more user friendly and helpful to the visitors of your website.

On-Site Vs. Offsite SEO: The Latest Recommendations

Google’s algorithm is constantly changing. As a marketer or entrepreneur optimizing your site, it’s important to know where to focus your energy to get the best returns. Each of these techniques plays an important role in your SEO strategy, and they work synergistically to give you the best chance of hitting the first page of Google. Here’s a guide to understanding the difference between on-site and offsite SEO and tips for putting each of them to work for you today.

What’s the difference between on-site and offsite SEO?

On-site SEO refers to the steps you take on your actual web page to lay the foundation for a good search strategy. At the structural level, these include your site’s titles, meta tags, URL structure, and XML sitemap. As you develop your content, it takes into account each page’s title tags, URLs, alt tags used for images, and the keywords used in each article or section of copy.
Off site SEO refers to the activities that you do to create a network of links pointing back to your site. Google and other search engines currently look to links for signals of authority and significance. Examples of offsite SEO include article marketing, linkbuilding, linkbait pieces designed to be shared on sites like Reddit, inbound marketing, and social media campaigns.
What can you do in each area to improve your site’s performance in the next 30 days?The quality of your content is by far the most important factor in your SEO plan. If your content is high quality and worthy of being linked to and shared, this goes a long way to support all the other efforts that you put in place. If the quality of your content is poor, the strongest SEO campaigns will have limited effects in the long-term. Make sure you’re taking the time to put out the best quality material.


Top 3 On-site SEO Action Points

• Install a good SEO Plug-in: If you use WordPress for a content management system, consider installing an SEO Plug-in like Yoast. This Plug-in will quickly evaluate your SEO situation and give you actionable tips that you can implement right away to improve your site. Features also include an easy analysis tool that gives you pointers on each new piece of content before you publish. This single step can have a dramatic impact on your rankings if you take action on the tool’s recommendations.
• Review your pages’ title tags: Title tags are used to tell search engines what a piece of online content is about. SEOMoz suggests that title tags are the second most important piece of website real estate after your actual content. You can view a page’s title tags across the top of your internet browser. The best title tags are descriptive and include your keywords, but should never be “stuffed” with them. A good structure to consider is [Primary Keyword] – [Site Name] – [Secondary Keyword]. So for example, if your site is about landscaping, the title of an article might be “How To Get a Green Lawn – The Happy Landscaper – How Often to Water and Mow Your Grass.”
• Ensure you have descriptive URLs: The default structure on many websites is something like www.website.com/01012012/782323084/. Instead, it’s important to have descriptive URLs that include your keyword. In our landscaping example, your URL might be www.website.com/landscaping/how-to-get-a-green-lawn

Top 3 Offsite SEO Action Points

• Identify a list of influencers in your niche: Develop a list of the top blogs and influencers in your niche. This list will become pure gold. Digging up the right data can take some time – it’s hard to find centralized information on this kind of research. Spend time daily or weekly reading content on these blogs and interacting thoughtfully through comments. The goal is to create real value in your discussions, and become a known entity to the writers and organizations behind these blogs. In addition to the link you may receive when you comment, over time this can open opportunities for you to guest post, for them to link to your content, or to promote your products and services. Don’t focus on this end goal though; instead, be committed to highly valuable interaction and establishing meaningful relationships.
• Guest posting: One of the best ways to get highly valuable and relevant links to your site is to guest post on other blogs in your space. You can find opportunities by looking at the blogs you typically read, or searching for keywords in your niche along with terms like “guest post” and “become a contributor.” When approaching a blog about guest posting, make sure that you focus on providing high quality content that’s specifically geared toward a blog’s audience.
• Effectively promote your content: If your content is high quality and highly linkable, this strategy can yield tremendous returns. It’s one thing to write great content; it’s another thing to write great content that’s never seen. Once you’ve focused on creating amazing material, do the legwork to get it out there. Be sure to share it on social media. Then focus your efforts on smart outreach to key influencers in your field whose readers would find it interesting. Craft a simple letter explaining why your work is a good fit for their readers, and then send it. Your goal is that they’ll take action by linking to your piece on their blog or referencing it in a newsletter or on social media.

Navigating SEO in 2013 can be a challenge. Knowing where to invest your efforts is key to seeing both short-term and long-term results. Use the three-pronged strategy of creating excellent high-quality content, developing the structural foundation of your site with on-site SEO, and building links through promotion and outreach. You’ll be well on your way to getting your site found.

SEO Tips For 2013

In this post I will give you 6 tips to improve SEO in 2013. Google is changing their algorithm for giving most relevant result for users. However one thing always remain after any search engine algorithm update, “Content“. It will be always on top.

6 Top SEO tips

Unique and fresh content

If You are copied content from other website, Search Engines will punish you specially Google. Not only in your website, don’t post duplicate guest post or articles. This may leads to get penalties your website and your ranking will goes down than current rankings.
Before you submit any content, make sure it is not already exists. You can use some online websites to check duplicate content. Here are some website.

• Copyscape
• Plagium
• Dupli Checker
• Copyright Spot

High quality content

Content is always king. When writing a content make sure you are using your targeting keywords in it. Writing keywords in first paragraph and last sentence may make your content better. But don’t use keywords much more otherwise your website will get punish for Keyword Stuffing.
Keep it fine in length. Don’t write too short or too long content. If your article is too short search engines can easily identify that your content is spam. That’s while most of article submission sites only approve articles more than 300 words. Write content for users more than SEO.

Natural Backlinks

Building backlinks are going to be very challenging. Google accept only natural backlinks to avoid spam sites. Many of websites are hitting by Google penguin. So build links naturally.  Comment spam will not work any more. Even Google will punish exact match anchor text links, when you are using same anchor text while link building.  Better is to avoid backlinks from untrusted websites. So you should avoid these Mistakes in SEO to rank your website better in Google and other search engines. You can use “Disavow links” in Google webmaster tools to avoid spam links. Try to earn some good backlinks, It is going to be really difficult to get do-follow links.

Internal links

Internal links is a very good SEO technique. It have so much features too. Internal links will makes bounce rate lower. Users have the ability to click on relevant links, and you will get good ranking in SEO and a free backlink. You can use related topics or posts after each post. But it should be relevant. By doing this visitors will not leave your website. You can also use “Breadcrumbs” to improve internal links. If you are using WordPress, you can checkout some essential SEO plugins that may make your blog’s rank better.

Social media

Social media have a great role for SEO in 2013. Getting likes in social media is showing that your content is good. Google +1, Facebook likes , Tweets will play a major role in Search engine optimization. After publishing your content make sure you are submitted post to social media websites such as Facebook, Google +1, twitter. Also your post will get more publicity in social marketing. So Share your post after publish.

Mobile friendly website

Day by day each people are  jumping from PC to tablets, smart phones etc. So half percent of your visitors will come from tablets or smart phones. Ensure you are optimized your website for these mobile devices and this will be a great experience for your visitors! If your blog is WordPress, free WordPress plugins are available to make your website mobile friendly.
More than this Google Author Rank play a great role on SEO. To make search more friendly Google has changed their algorithm frequently. Search engine optimization for Google is going to be really difficult. Anyway Focus on your content!