CEO chips

We have written several articles where the SEO (search engine optimization) process is covered in its entirety. It’s time to dig deeper and tell in more detail and a few chips. Today it will be CNC (human-readable url).

In this article we will tell you about what it is, what types there are, how to set it up and, most importantly, what impact they have on search engine promotion.

seo – useful url what is it

seo – useful url or CNC (Human Understandable URL) is a unique web page address that contains a user-friendly set of characters and reflects its content. How did they even appear?

The fact is that to simplify site management, CMS systems (site content management systems) were invented. When creating pages, the CMS automatically generates the url of the page, which consists of an alphanumeric code. The code is clear and logical for the creators of this software and search engines, but for the average user it is a jumble of numbers and letters.

Human-readable urls, as the name suggests, are designed to solve this problem. And they serve to ensure that only pages with short, beautiful and understandable names appear on the Internet.

Thanks to the CNC, you can easily find out information about the page even before opening it. Such links can be easily remembered and entered into the browser line if necessary. If you enter in the url a keyword that is contained in the user’s request, then the search engine will highlight your url in bold when generating the results (this serves as a signal to the user that this address is the most consistent with his request).

All of the above can increase the number of conversions to your site, which means that cnc has a beneficial effect on seo. Let’s take a closer look at the rules for drawing up a CNC.

Types of human-readable urls

There are several ways to write a human-readable URL:

• Latin.
• Cyrillic.
• Transliteration.

Url with latin

The first appeared page addresses were written in Latin letters. These characters are perfectly perceived by search engines and are known by most of the world’s inhabitants. An indisputable plus will be the fact that words like “catalog”, “contacts”, “phones” are already firmly entrenched in our minds and are easily perceived by people without knowledge of English.

An example would be a path like this: www.site.ru / engines / content / urls

URL with Cyrillic

A relatively new type of urls. New and therefore there are many difficulties with it. The main disadvantage of this recording format is that when you copy the page address and then send it in a message or paste it into a text document, there will be problems with transcoding. More precisely, the site address will be recoded into something incomprehensible, not perceived by the eye of an ordinary user.

For example, two links from Wikipedia:

• https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_optimization
• https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0 % BE% D0% BF% D1% 82% D0% B8% D0% BC% D0% B8% D0% B7% D0% B0% D1% 86% D0% B8% D1% 8F

They lead to the same page, and when you copy the link address, you get an address of the same type as the second link. It is called Punycode in another way. Check it yourself. Add to this the problems with indexing and seo-optimization, and the Cyrillic URL becomes not such a good option.

URL written in transliteration

Instead of writing Russian words in the url in Cyrillic characters, transliteration is used. Search engines recognize any transliteration, so this option is the most suitable for creating an understandable URL. With the help of this writing, you can easily create clear and readable addresses, both for users and for search robots.

Impact of URLs on SEO

The page address is a powerful ranking factor for all pages on the Internet. Why? Human-readable addresses contain keywords and phrases by which users find these pages – search engines have a positive attitude to the entry of keys into the url of the page.

The mechanics are simple: you start using CNC with key entry – more and more people see your page address as being consistent with their request – more and more clicks to your site. The search engine sees this and begins to promote you up in the search results.

How to set up the CNC

Follow our simple guidelines to properly configure the url on your pages.

Choose type

To facilitate and speed up the process of setting up and assigning addresses in CMS systems, it is possible to set the appearance of addresses. We recommend choosing a transliterated url spelling. All search engines are equally loyal to them – their search robots perfectly understand this spelling. Plus – they are perfectly perceived when viewed by a person.

If you have a lot of pages that need to set urls, use one of the links below. These services will translate the spelling of the url from Cyrillic to transliterated and do it quickly. Links below:

Service number 1

Service number 2

CNC length

Not all browsers set the maximum address length. But this does not mean that you can write all the content of the article into it. Choose a short, clear and memorable address. This is where the recommendations for the length end :).

Spaces, underscores, and hyphens: which to use?

It is strictly forbidden to use spaces. They are replaced with a hyphen “-” or an underscore “_”. Search engines respond positively to both of these characters, but we recommend using the hyphen (“-”). And that’s why:

Compare these two urls:

1. www.site.ru/moy-site/statia-nomer-odin
2. www.site.ru/moy_site/statia_nomer_odin

Notice that the underscore of the second address merges with the stripe that underlines the link itself – this combination does not look aesthetically pleasing. Therefore, we give our preference to writing urls with a hyphen sign.

Frequent mistakes

Let’s look at some of the most common cases of errors in the construction of page addresses:

• The presence of spaces and extra characters in the address. Leads to loss of semantic load, errors and worsens the readability of the address.
• Lack of keywords in the CNC. Keys in the url are just as necessary as including them in the title or texts on the site.
• Using urls that use both Latin and Cyrillic characters.
• Complex words and phrases in urls. Try to keep your addresses as simple as possible. Remember they should be easy to read and, ideally, memorable. Try to optimize them.

CNC for images, documents and other files

When indexing a page, the search robot analyzes not only the text, but also all other elements that are on the page. Everything is scanned: videos, photos, and other documents. The search robot needs to determine the content of the document and the usefulness of these files for site visitors. The file name plays an important role in the definition. If it is something like this: “49585839.jpg”, then the information about the content of the crawlers will be much less than if you reflected the content in the file name, writing: “sobaka.jpg”.

Search engines understand the contents of images and other documents not only with the help of CNC, but also based on the general topic of the document, meta – data, alt attribute and other parameters. But, it is our responsibility to give search robots complete data.

Let’s sum up

There are both obvious pros and cons when using CNC. Let’s summarize the advantages and disadvantages.

Benefits

• The use of CNC ensures successful improvement of positions throughout the entire existence of the site.
• Url pages are easy for visitors to remember. As a result, there is an increase in direct visits to the site, which has a positive effect on seo.
• Facilitates the user’s work with the site. It is easy to navigate by readable urls within the sections of the site. It is enough to remove one of the last links, and you are already one level higher. This method of navigation is called “bread crumbs”.

disadvantages

There are much fewer drawbacks, but still it is necessary to say about them:

• Difficulties with transliterating Russian letters into Latin ones. The solution to this problem is to use the services we gave above.
• Increased server load.

These inconveniences are easily removed by the fact that CNC better provide your users with convenient navigation within the resource, and you are provided with the growth of organic traffic from search engines. Use the recommendations we gave you in this article and get more conversions!