Today, Google URL presentation is changing from showing the sites URL to it’s real world name. According to Google this change should help searchers understand websites better. Although it’s initial roll out is for mobile, it will roll out to desktops too. You can read the whole article here. The changes should look like this:
Instead of showing this:
http://trbdesigns.com/news-updates/web-marketing/search-engine-optimization/4-simple-seo-fixes/
Google URL Presentation Changes to this:
TRBdesign>news-updates>web-marketing>search-engine-optimization>4-simple-seo-fixes
This makes 2 things really important. The first is to make sure you have the name of your site set the way you want it. Second, if you are not currently showing breadcrumbs you should. This change does not give you license to make up any name for your site that you want. Here are the Google guidelines:
- Be reasonbly similar to your domain name
- Be a natural name used to refer to the site, such as “Google,” rather than “Google, Inc.”
- Be unique to your site—not used by some other site
- Not be a misleading description of your site
To change your site name in WordPress is pretty easy. In your dashboard go to General Settings. Simply enter the name of your site, scroll down and click the save changes button and your done.
If you are not already showing the breadcrumbs for your pages, this is a big incentive to. Seeing the breadcrumbs gives users a much better feel for what the page is about. According to Google “A breadcrumb trail is a set of links (breadcrumbs) that can help a user understand and navigate your site’s hierarchy”. Again this is pretty simple to do in WordPress. In your dashboard go to Settings/Permalink, check the custom structure and add /%category%/%postname%/ save and your all set. To make sure the entire string shows make sure that when selecting what category you only select the lowest subcategory in the string.
