What Is a URL? (Uniform Resource Locator)

URL (short for Uniform Resource Locator) stands for an address that shows where a file is located on a server. By entering a URL in the web browser or clicking on a hyperlink, users call up content on the internet. In everyday usage, URL often refers to the domain name. The domain name, however, is only part of the complete URL.

A URL is made up of various components. The syntax pattern is: scheme://host[:port]/path[?query][#fragment]. For search engine optimization (SEO) URLs play an important role.

How Is a URL Structured?

The important components of a URL are the following:

Protocol: For websites, this is HTTP or HTTPS. Alternatively, file or ftp can also appear here. That is because users can also use a URL to open files on their computer or in their mail program.
Port number: Is only displayed if it differs from the protocol’s default port (80 for HTTP, 443 for HTTPS, 21 for FTP). Since the vast majority of web traffic today runs over HTTPS, 443 is the practically relevant default port.
Host or hostname: It is made up of the subdomain and domain. Another important component is the domain ending, or top-level domain (TLD). This is, for example, “.de” or “.com”.
Directory: Especially on extensive websites, several directories are often shown.
File name: It stands for the file that the user wants to have displayed.

A URL structured in this way would be:

https://www.domainname.com/lexikon/URL

Especially URLs of online shops, but also of YouTube videos, for example, additionally contain parameters. These are information introduced by a question mark, like here:

https://www.domainname.com/jacken?type=westen

Several parameters in an address are strung together using “&”. In addition to protocol, port, host, directory, and file name, two further components belong to the URL syntax:

the query string (introduced with ?, several parameters concatenated with &, e.g. ?type=westen&groesse=42)
and the fragment identifier or anchor (introduced with #, e.g. #kapitel-2).

The fragment part makes the browser jump to a specific place in the document and – unlike the other components – is not transmitted to the server. Complete scheme: scheme://host[:port]/path[?query][#fragment].

URL and SEO

For on-page optimization URLs play a central role. URLs provide search engines with information about the architecture of a website and should ideally not be changed – an argument for considering the URL structure as early as the concept phase.

So that search engines can read a URL without problems, umlauts and special characters are encoded: in domains via Punycode (ACE encoding with the prefix “xn--”), in the path via URL/percent encoding (e.g. spaces as %20). A content-level transliteration (ae instead of ä) is an editorial convention, not a technical “translation into ASCII”.
Especially advantageous are “descriptive URLs” like https://www.firmenname.de/onlineshop/schuhe. They immediately reveal to users where they will end up, increase trust, boost click rates, and lower susceptibility to errors. Search engines also give them preferential treatment.
Relevant keywords in the URL help search engine bots classify pages more easily. For companies, their own company name is a good choice for the domain name; for new startups, it should be clarified early whether it is available as a domain.

Beyond the general “descriptive URLs”, concrete best practices apply:

word separators with a hyphen instead of an underscore (Google reads “rote-schuhe” as two words, “rote_schuhe” as one word),
consistent lowercase (servers can treat uppercase/lowercase differently and thereby generate duplicate content),
a flat directory structure with few levels
as well as avoiding session IDs and superfluous dynamic parameters.

Shortening URLs

There are various services with which very long URLs can be shortened free of charge. However, this is considered questionable for two reasons:

Many such services store data without the users’ consent.
Shortened links usually consist of opaque sequences of letters and numbers and do not reveal where they lead. As a result, they seem less trustworthy and can have a negative effect on click rates.

In general, it makes sense to keep URLs as short as possible from the outset so that they are displayed in full in the SERPs of Google and other search engines. This can be achieved, among other things, by omitting filler words and parameters.

Quellen

How Is a URL Structured?

URL and SEO

Shortening URLs

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