iCrackerjack Blogging Services

We recently wrote a small series on SEO and SEO techniques you can use to build your website on a solid foundation, and write articles that will defeat your competition’s defenses and get you some traffic. (Click here to read the first article of the series.)

Well, the series went so well, we decided to keep the momentum, and keep teaching you the basics of SEO. Now, I want to start off by mentioning SEO experts — don’t listen to the self-proclaimed guru’s. They will tell you that ‘this’ or ‘that’ technique doesn’t work, or that certain SEO things don’t matter anymore.

This is false! Read this article to get the skinny on SEO guru’s.

The truth is, you should probably be doing most of the things you have heard about. Our goal is to educate you how.

So what about SEO friendly URLs?
Yes, URL’s are still important for a solid SEO foundation for your website. Wanna know why? URLs are what the search engines read first. It’s how they map your entire site, telling them where to look to find your high-quality content.

What is a URL?
Put simply, a URL is a web page’s address. It can be displayed many different ways. Technically, it starts with http://, but when you’re telling people your URL, you usually start with www.mywebsite.com. From there, you add pages, and each page on your site has its own address. From there, there are countless combinations, but let’s keep things simple.

URL hierarchy
Let’s talk about using keywords. You want to use keywords everywhere on your site, especially in the URL. The sooner you use a keyword or key phrase in the URL, the higher that keyword will be ranked by the search engines. Examine the diagram below:

How to create SEO friendly URLs
You may ask, “I’m not a technical person, how do I create URLs on my blog?”
1. in the diagram above would give you the highest ranking with search engines, so start by choosing a domain name that contains your top keyword or key phrase.
2. Categories. You should have 5 – 10 categories on your site. Choose ones with high ranking keywords (more details here).
3. Tags. You can see that they aren’t quite as important as categories, so you can use more freedom. But still choose as high-ranking keywords as you can.
4. Your article name shows up in your URL (if you’re using WordPress and are using the right settings). So choose a title that uses some good keywords.

Some tips:
If you already have a website, but it doesn’t have your keywords in it, consider transferring your site to a new domain
If you don’t want to do that, get a second website that links to your main site
Make sure your categories are showing on your site — usually on your sidebar
Make sure to use tags (This article will teach you how to get the most out of your tags)
Under Settings>Permalinks, choose an option that uses your article name in the URL. A. is good if you’re not technically minded. If you’re an advanced user, you can copy the settings in option B.*