1. Maximum URL characters
2. Keyword stuffing in URL 
3. How to choose an URL ?
4. URL length dividers or word separation syntax
5. Plural or singular keyword in URL ?
6. How to choose a domain Name for URL ?  
7. Length of a domain URL name
8. Dot com (.com) or some other URL domain extension
9. Characters to avoid in URL

How to choose maximum length of URL characters, in terms of being search engine friendly? Are there any limitations or thumb-rules ? For SEO benefits and precautions, one should exactly know how to put in the keywords in the URL and not making it too long to get truncated by search engines. You might ask, would some search engines for example not index a page which exceeds certain number of characters in the URL? Whether you are an affiliate or not, the considerations for choosing an URL and the number of characters remain the same for anybody wanting to go online.

You will surprised to know if you don’t already, that dropping keywords in URL technically isn’t helpful much today in the first place, at-least according to current algorithms in the google search engine. However all factors related to URL indexing and URL character selections do have some effect and benefits with the aging of your site. A word of caution though is that keyword loaded URL’s may often cause your site to get prolonged in the sandbox (the period you wait till google decides to show your indexed pages in the search engine results).

But as a matter of fact, the keywords do get bolded when a search is made for that particular keyword inthe search results. Personally, I still do like to use keywords in the URLs smartly not because I believe they may help in ranking or outranking my competitors with the search results but because of it’s apparent visual relevancy.

When you search for a particular term and it gets highlighted in the url and in the meta description simultaneously, it gives an added visibility or readability and finally you are rewarded with more visitors. So thus you have a better chance of portraying a relevant result in the eye of the searcher but please don’t expect to rank at the top search engine results only because you chose or repeated a keyword in the URL.

A common mistake people often make, while choosing an URL is like selecting something as outrageous ass shown below.

www.mydomain.com/my-product-for-sale-is-something-you-wouldn’t-find-anywhere-else-so-what-are-you-waiting-for.com

Well, obviously i exaggerated it a bit but unbelievably true, most beginners with some little or no concept about SEO do get over-enthusiastic about such long URLs, hoping to be a market leader overnight, just because their URLs read everything about the attribute, benefits, features; all that is expected by the visitor at the landing page. Wrong. Thank the search engine algorithms that it doesn’t really happen that way, or else you probably wouldn’t land at this page so easily with simple and communicative url as this.

http://www.affiliatehow.com/seo/url/maximum-length-of-url-characters/

It is interesting to observe occasional accidental spike results with highly long and descriptive URLs alongside your url once in a while, but they seem to vanish completely just as fast as they appeared. There are 50 million calculations performed by google to assign a page rank to every url in the universe, which means the algorithms don’t stop with URLs appearing once in the top results, rather it continuously crawl a maze of gazillion URLs every second to search for even better relevancy. So trust me, in the long run, with the way search engines are evolving, highly long URLs will simply be outranked or probably totally de-indexed for irrelevancy and may even be penalized with URL truncations. Quite a nightmare to see that happen for your important pages specially if they are your money earning pages. 

But yes, I do not recommend using a keyword in the URL only if you are all determined to optimize the landing page for that particular keyword as the primary one. Because keywords in URL may not help you much in search engine results, but deliberate usage of a keyword in the URL extension without landing optimization doesn’t go well with the search engines. It may consider it a mismatch of keywords.

As for browsers, Internet Explorer (IE) can handle something like 2000 characters in URL. Of course, they should never be that long. In fact the servers may choke on anything above 255 characters. So finally how to choose maximum characters in an URL or what are the rules for an URL selection ? Read on.

Basic URL Rules.

1. Maximum URL characters
Maximum URL length to be ideally around 80-100 characters. Lesser characters are more SEO friendly. As for this particular post “http://www.affiliatehow.com/seo/url/maximum-length-of-url-characters/” it counts below 70 characters, which is why it stands as a good  search engine acceptable URL without ever facing truncations. And at the same time, it communicates the subject of this URL post successfully as well.

2. Keyword stuffing in URL 
Don’t go over the top stuffing too many keywords in your url, like for example:

www.domain.com/keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.html

This option is redundant and goes against SEO foundation rules. You can expect top SERPs only for a primary keyword optimized for a single. If at all you have too may keywords to deal with, please organize your content, assign hierarchy to your keywords, make dedicated and relevant pages for each keyword and thus design you URLs.

The correct way to do this would be
www.domain.com/primary-keyword.html   (or)
www.domain.com/category/primary-keyword.html   (or)
www.domain.com/primary-keyword/secondary-keyword.html ( By organizing keyword rich content and using keyword page distribution methods )

3. How to choose an URL ?
Before you choose on URL characters, begin with a proper website architecture, keyword research and then by developing original content with pagewise distribution, so that you can handle each of your keyword for a particular page. Lot more goes into SEO, from meta tags to meta descriptions, header names to keyword density and positioning, dynamic and static pages, permalinks etc. Read and learn all about them in my dedicated posts soon to be added in affiliatehow.

If you really plan to have a growing number of visitors to your website and top the search results, then in short, your url decision comes in order of

a) Choosing your niche.
b) Developing original written content. ( everything about SEO is about what the search engines read not assume )
c) Choosing the primary and secondary keywords.
d) Developing keyword optimized content for primary and secondary keywords and designing pages and internal links for every keyword.
e) Deciding on URL characters and keywords based on your keyword rich content to follow on that page. 

4. URL length dividers or word separation syntax
Simply don’t forget to put spacing between each words in the URL words and separate them with a (-) symbol. There are two syntax (conventions) accepted for spacing the words, one with a hyphen (-) and one with an underscore (_) e.g.,
www.domain.com/how-to-decide-url-maximum-length
www.domain.com/how_to_decide_url_maximum_length

Both options are indexed in search engines but the 1st example given with a hyphen (-) spacing symbol is what you should opt for a proper SEO. If not for anything, do it because google suggests so.

Search engines today are smart enough to highlight search words in bold letters in whatever way you choose an URL, but with words it is always wise to separate them with dashes or hyphens.

Although google does perfectly return pages if an user searches a combination of words with an underscore e.g., word1_word2 (which is almost highly unlikely for anyone to type that way).

But If you have a url like word1-word2, your page can appear in the the search results as word1, word2, and even “word1 word2″.

So the conclusion is to choose dashes instead of underscores. Google doesn’t penalize domains with dashes in their URL, but rather it finds it easier to read the words that you have intended the page for.

5. Plural or singular keyword in URL ? 
I can reasonably call it a common practice to have plural keywords in URLs. But to bring to your notice, you can simply save an extra character without loosing your search relevancy. The suggestion I’m going to make is purely based from my experience so far with google indexed pages and their results for that keyword. I would recommend using singular word for URLs. Why?

a) You save on Maximum URL characters length. Extremely important.

b) Think in terms of a user on a search engine. Based on my personal experience and the keyword research tools I use, I have always found better statistics for more singular word searches for most niches than plural ones. The obvious reason is that people’s need for things are generally in singular numbers. Let’s say a common man searching for an iPod will mostly likely to type “ipod for sale” than ipods for sale. I will convince you with a very simple example of the keyword “ipod for sale”. Sometimes the number differences are negligible but i will always suggest going for singular words in URL. 

Simply go to http://www.google.com/trends and do a search of the keywords, “ipod for sale” and “ipods for sale”, basically singular and plural both. In order to get the results, separate the keywords with a comma (,) as shown below.

ipods sale, ipod sale

Press Enter. You will see the graph trend for singular keyword “ipod for sale” is going far above the plural keyword “ipods for sale”. So now you know which one to choose. 

c) The search engines today with the extra advanced dictionary know well about all the usages of a particular noun, verb or an adjective. So save on number of characters in the URL and opt for singular keywords.

6. How to choose a domain name for URL ? 

Don’t space out words ideally in the primary domain name with any of the (-) symbol as stated above. This may not directly affect your search engine results, but it is still recommended, because of user’s typing convenience.

Suppose you were to sell homes, then don’t get prompted to buy an url such as
www.buy-homes.com
www.cheap-homes.com

The recommended way to choose an URL would be
www.buyhomes.com
www.cheaphomes.com

Although it’s highly unlikely to find an available URL in dot com domain for generic words. But nonetheless the suggestion given above holds true for any niche or domain names. Please read my follow up article on “how to choose a niche domain URL” to be published at affiliatehow.com soon. And It’s a must, as every online business, blogging, search engine optimization begins with a domain name. Remember to read the URL repeatedly without a hyphen separation between words before buying. In some cases it can mean something totally different if you’re not careful with it. For example if your url is www.ipodsmart.com where you wanted it to read ipods mart, it might be more obvious to the eyes and search engines to read the same as ipod smart, because the words are without a separation between them. So be careful with URL words and avoid any kind of confusion for the user and search engines alike.   

7. Length of a domain URL name
My answer is keep it short and sweet. To be precise, keep it simple to remember specially if it’s a niche website or an online e-commerce store. Or even blogging for that matter. After all we want returning traffic to our website who should be able to recollect the page they visited from memory or by easily typing the URL in case they lost your bookmarked page. 

The moment i say choose a simple URL, I am suggesting you an impossibility. Because simple domain names in any given niche for .com extension are invariably gone or are for sale with huge price tags. Till date it gives me a kick to discover how people have already booked almost implausible URL names and combinations of words, for any given niche. It requires entirely a different expertise and strategy to choose a domain name today which you can read from article on “how to choose a domain name ?” soon. But briefly there are two ways to keep it short and recallable.

a) Get creative with keywords. Explore beyond your imagination with every possible keywords combinations till you do arrive at certian available names. It may take while or let’s say a long while. And I don’t mean arriving at bogus words, unpronounceable character combinations like an off-hand example “kainfonir” or grammatically incorrect words. I’m not sure if that too is taken by someone. Such meaningless words may still be available but you should opt for them, only if it is easy to remember or if you have a solid strategy to  justify and then promote such a domain name. Nothing wrong with such names but maybe making it a wee bit relevant to the search engines can reward us with more traffic and eventually more money. Interestingly, in some cases I have even spent 7-10 days repeatedly searching for hundreds of domain names for some of my websites including www.affiliatehow.com, in order to keep it short and relevant. Whereas designing some of my elaborate e-commerce websites didn’t take me more than 2-3 days. I have an interesting experience to share about deciding on this domain name affiliatehow which i will posting soon. 

b) Second approach to choosing a domain name would be to think about branding a website than just keywords. Since URLs don’t really affect your search engine ranks directly, I say there is no harm in keeping a non keyword based domain name if every  combination you have thought of, is unavailable or unaffordable. Trust me your major work and ranking strategies will have to be focussed on Search Engine Optimization of pages than simply having done with keywords in URL. If you are well optimized, people will still find you and eventually supported by good graphic design, tools and most importantly great content,  you can have a winning URL with more traffic and more money. Think up of names and words or combinations that are easily pronounceable and rememberable, which may not even mean anything from the dictionary. It could be even a jargon word you have invented or a word combination you are confident about converting the same in a brand, and then go about with a with a graphic logo design and followed by great relevant content and SEO.

c) If you are brand name yourself or you plan to be one, then there are pretty good chances that you can find an url for your own name. This could then be unique to your character and stand out, provided your name is not confusing to the online target audience or isn’t difficult to spell. What if it is, still you can get away with a difficult to spell name like “Arnold Schwarzenegger” if you too have similar offline brand value or fame . This works well one time, if you are into blogging or you want to develop a niche site around your name. But for multiple online business diversifications, you will have to resort to the first two options. 

8. Dot com (.com) or some other URL domain extension
There is theoretically no harm in selecting a different extension for a domain URL other than dot com. But definitely there are certain cons than pros which you must be careful about. So how do you decide on a url extension?
a) If a .com isn’t available for your chosen name, then somebody must be using it, has it parked or has it up for sale. There are two situations to consider. If you eventually have well optimized website, any extension can outrank a dot com page for the same search term. But in a scenario when people want to find you out,  may actually not find you, because everyone as a thumbrule always type in dot com as an url extension. If an online searcher who should be landing on your page or is trying to look for your brand, goes to somebody else’s domain with your name and dot com extension, they may only get confused and ultimately quit the search.

If you grow well online and have generated a loyal visitor base, then there are chances that the dot com owner for the same name could be getting bulk of the dot com searchers instead of you. And then there are all the chances that parked .com owner cashes in on that traffic and launches something totally contradictory to your website and thus jeopardize your online reputation. It may be easier to find a domain name for any other extension than dot com, but as a rule, if you don’t have a special reason that you can come up with, work your brains off, do wild brainstorming and opt for a dot com than repenting over it later. And i would insist, if possible buy off all the major URL extensions for your domain name so that you can totally brand it in your own way, leaving no choices for online parasitic websites cashing on your domain name forever. If you find it unaffordable, it should be the on your immediate agenda, when you start earning revenues from your dot com business.

b) If your business is localized to certain country or region, then country based domain extensions could be your choice for a particular name.

c) If your website visitors are purely based on referrals, and you don’t care about SEO and SERPs, any URL extension would do but still the cons for the same apply.

9. Characters to avoid in URL
Certain characters in URL, which may get indexed in google do get misinterpreted by search engines and create problems later for moved pages and for mod rewrites. I will enlist them here soon. I will quote a personal example to this. Initially 2 years back I quite enthusiastically named a category with a “$ sign” and added multiple pages to the category which were optimized for product price ranges. So my urls read like

www.mydomain.com/$-store/myproduct1-for-$-n/
www.mydomain.com/$-store/myproduct2-for-$-m/
www.mydomain.com/$-store/myproduct3-for-$-o/  

My urls started to appear in top 5 and often the 1st result in searches for that particular product and price range within a few days, because i knew people were searching with specific budget in mind. I was way too happy and proud because I pulled some great traffic from my competitors from organic searches. Then hoping for even better relevancy and traffic, at a later point in time, i changed the “$-store” category to “$-product” and tried to redirect every indexed page with the $ symbol to the new category,  but that is when the problems started. You couldn’t redirect an old moved page with a $ symbol because the redirection code itself has a $ symbol to it which is a variable. And eventually I had to force all my well ranked pages to the home page instead. So i couldn’t use the hard earned rankings from the earlier pages by transferring them to my new dollar pages. In short I had to start all over again with a new SEO friendly category name and strategy, leaving the $ symbols only in the content and headers, alt names and title tags. I don’t want you to make the same mistake as i did. So be careful with URL characters. I will put the full list of unsuitable characters here in a few days. 

More to come on mastering SEO techniques, that i have been using for a long time and reaping the benefits by earning great passive income from muliple affiliate programs. ( Passive Income? The money I earn from online businesses automatically even when i go to sleep )

Please feel at home to drop in your comments if you found this article on URL useful. Or better if you are interested to know more on SEO. For the records i am totally focussed on making affiliatehow.com, a complete guide with tips and tutorials on online affiliate business, for beginners and advanced players alike.

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