if your website is structured Like a house, your website URL is like the address of that house. It defines where your website resides online, just as your home address determines where in the neighborhood you live, helping your visitors easily find your site. URLs also help Google understand what pages on your website are about.
There are several parts to a URL, and they are extremely important for optimizing your site User Experience (UX) And SEO, To help you develop a solid understanding of each part of a URL, let’s explore each of them in detail.
What are the parts of URL?
A URL consists of ten parts: scheme, subdomain, top-level domain, second-level domain, subdirectory, parameter, port, path, query, and fragment. While a URL need not contain all of these parts at once, it will always contain at least three parts.
Below is an example of the basic parts of a URL. A URL always consists of a scheme or protocol, a domain name, and a path.
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However, a URL can have more attributes than the basic components listed above. Let’s take a comprehensive look at the URL structure below.
url structure
1. Planning
The scheme (also called protocol) tells the web server which protocol to use when accessing a page on your website.
Nowadays, HTTPS — which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure — is the most common scheme. This tells your web browser to encrypt any information you enter on the page, such as your password or credit card information, so that cyber criminals cannot access it. This security protocol Protects your website visitors and implementing it will help your site to rank better on Google. Therefore it is imperative to implement SSL on any Technical SEO Guide,
Other schemes you may see are mailto://, which can open your computer’s default email service provider to help you draft an email to the email address you entered in the URL, and ftp://, which is a standard protocol for the email address you entered transfer computer files Between a client and a server on a computer network.
2. Subdomain
If your website is like a house, then your subdomains are like specific rooms in that house. A subdomain in the URL indicates which particular page of your website the web browser should serve. For example, a subdomain such as “blog” or “offers” will provide a blog page or an offer page of your website.
Subdomains also bucket your website into its main content categories and show Google and your visitors that there is more information on your site than just a homepage.
3. Second Level Domain
Yours second level domain (SLD) is the name of your website. This helps people know that they are visiting a specific brand’s site. For example, people visiting “mlb.com” know they are on Major League Baseball’s website without needing any further information.
4. Top-Level Domain
The top-level domain (TLD) specifies the type of entity your organization registers on the Internet.
For example, “.com” is intended for commercial entities in the United States, so many US businesses register with the “.com” top-level domain. Similarly, “.edu” is intended for educational institutions in the United States, so many American colleges and universities register with the “.edu” top-level domain.
5. Subdirectories
A subdirectory – also known as a subfolder – also helps people web crawler Understand which particular section of the webpage they are on.
For example, if you own an online store that sells T-shirts, hats, and mugs, a URL for your website might look like “https://shop.yourstore.com/hats”. Note that the subdomain is “shop” and the subdirectory is “hat”. This means that this URL will display the “hats” page, which is a subfolder of the “shop” page. T-shirts and mugs would be its other subfolders. this page.
6. Port
Port is a number used to specify a connection endpoint and direct data to a specific service. Different servers will use different port numbers. This number is always associated with a host network address, such as an IP address. For example an HTTP server is identified using 80, while an HTTPS server uses 443 as its port number.
7. Path
Path specifies the location of the file or resource the user wants to access. In the example below, the specified path text would be “parth-url”.
8. Question
Have you ever noticed question marks appearing in some URLs when Google displays your search results? That question mark says that a specific query is being performed and is used before the query string. A query string specifies the parameters of the data to be queried from the website’s database. We’ll dig into the parameters next.
9. Parameters
Parameters are the values to be asked during the search. The parameter can be a number, encrypted value, search term, or other data that can be found on the website. A URL parameter consists of a key and a value, separated by an equal sign (=). A URL can contain multiple parameters, which are then each separated by an ampersand (&).
Written out, the structure would look like this:
https//www.hubspotexample.com/page?key1=value1&key2=value2
UTM parameters are used to track your marketing or promotional efforts. These parameters added to the end of the URL can track how visitors are arriving on your site and if they are interacting with any affiliate marketing campaigns.
10 pieces
Fragment is an optional component of URL which is usually terminated with a hash (#). They indicate a specific location on a webpage, like an ID or name attribute, but can also point to other resources, such as a footer or sidebar.
URL Structure: Subtle Yet Necessary
Even though URLs may seem simple and arbitrary, they are actually important to the UX and SEO of your website. And now that you understand each part of a URL, check out the blog posts below to learn more about technical SEO.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in October 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
