Viral Content: Use a Descriptive URL

A Microsoft study found trusted domains get 25% more clicks. Opt for example.com/cute-cats vs.  example.com/blog/post?id=5421!6g.

BRIAN'S TAKE

This guideline is very simple:

Your blog post URL should give people a short summary of your post’s topic…and nothing else.

A URL with lots of junk — like, example.com/postid=2891/why-you-use-confusing-urls — confuses people.

Confusion=fewer clicks. Fewer clicks=fewer shares.

How about an example?

A while back I published a post called, Ecommerce SEO Case Study: White Hat Link Building Without Any Content.

That post is a case study that shows you how a Backlinko reader (Chris) built backlinks to his ecommerce client’s site.

Because the post was all about “ecommerce SEO”, I made the URL:

Also:

Yes, “Ecommerce SEO” described my post’s topic.

But it also happened to be my target keyword.

Thanks to the SEO-friendly URL (and a bunch of other factors), that post now ranks in the top 5 for “ecommerce SEO”: