Last Updated on June 7, 2025 by Admin
One very important activity you must undertake is making your URL SEO friendly. This is what makes your website easily found by search engines. URLs are not just web addresses; they are essential for SEO and user-friendliness of any site.
Your SEO work will be boosted with the right URLs, while the wrong ones will hamper your website progress. It should be concise, to the point, and optimized with keywords to relay the content of your web pages both to the search engines and the users. Below is a quick guide outlining some important basic tips regarding the URL structure you should use on your website to rank higher on SERP.
What are SEO-friendly URLs?
SEO-friendly URLs refer to web addresses that have been optimized so that they are easy to comprehend for users and search engine to identify what the page is all about. They are generally concise, informative, and contain the keyword string.
Why are URLs Important for SEO?
You may perhaps be wondering if URLs are actually that important. And the answer to this question is yes! Here’s why:
- Improved User Experience: Clean and easy-to-understand SEO URLs are very beneficial for the overall reception of the website among users. When users find a URL well formatted in the search engine, they can instantly predict results. This clarity can enhance the click-through rates and minimize the bounce rates, thus improve the traffic of website.
- Better Search Engine Rankings: Search engines consider URLs one of the many signals that they use to comprehend and subsequently rank websites. The keyword in the URL can help the search engine understand what your page is about, possibly increasing its ranking for those terms.
- Valuable Link Building Asset: When people re-post content, the anchor text usually uses the URL to help get high-quality backlinks. An SEO-friendly URL may effectively act as a description; thus, people will use appropriate anchor text to link to your content.
8 Best Practices to Create SEO Friendly URLs
With this background idea of SEO friendly URLs, let’s proceed to develop them. Here are 11 best practices to guide you:
- Include target keyword in URL: Try to use the main keyword or phrase for which you want to optimize that web page in the url string. It helps users and search engines both to quickly understand what the page is about.
For example, if you’re writing a guide about dog training, a good URL might be: www.domain.com/dog-training-guide
This URL directly states the content of the web page. But do not try to stuff keywords that are irrelevant or make no sense.
- Use only hyphens to separate words: Use hyphens (-) to divide words in your page URLs. it is advantageous because search engines consider hyphens spaces for your URLs’ sake. Do not use other characters like underscores (_) as they are not word separators for search engines. For example:
- Good: www.domain.com/best-smartphones-2023
- Bad: www.domain.com/best_smartphones_2023 or www.domain.com/bestsmartphones2023
- Use lowercase letters in URLs: Make your URLs small letters throughout the webpage. URLs are case-sensitive, it may consider as different pages in lower and upper cases. This could have implications resulting in the formation of duplicate content. For example: www.domain.com/seo-tips is preferable to www.domain.com/SEO-Tips or www.domain.com/SEO-tips.
- Keep URLs short: Shorter URLs are better for SEO. Ideally, the URLs to your blog should not be more than 60 characters. For example: www.domain.com/seo-tips is better than www.domain.com/this-is-a-page-about-seo-tips-for-beginners.
- Use static URLs: Static URLs are considered to be more SEO-friendly because they are constant and do not change, while dynamic URLs are made up of parameters that may sometimes change with the user’s action. Whereas static URLs are less cluttered, more readable for users, and also preferred by search engines due to their easier indexability. For example:
- Static URL: www.domain.com/mens-shoes/running
- Dynamic URL: www.domain.com/products.php?category=shoes&type=running&gender=men
- Watch out for subdomains: Google recognizes subdomains as separate sites, decreasing the overall site’s power, while subfolders keep everything in one place. Subfolders are more suitable for site organization than subdomains if you are concerned about SEO.
- Subdomain: blog.domain.com
- Subfolder: www.domain.com/blog
- Limit folders in URL structure: It is advised that the URL structure should not be very deep. Avoid having subdirectories nested deeply. The lack of hierarchy in the structure of your site is an advantage because it is easy for the crawling algorithm to assist in the distribution of link equity.
- Good: www.domain.com/womens/dresses
- Avoid: www.domain.com/shop/womens/clothing/dresses/summer
- Make content match the URLs: Make sure the page’s URL corresponds to the content it hosts. This is useful for the user so they know what to expect and what is necessary for indexing bots to know your page’s topic. The first URL shows what page is being navigated, and the second URL does not give visitors any idea about what the page contains.
For a page about caring for indoor plants:
- Good: www.domain.com/indoor-plant-care
- Bad: www.domain.com/green-thumb-tips
Focus on making URLs user friendly is worth stressing that SEO URLs are one of the smallest factors impacting ranking; it also attempt to communicate what is on the page through URLs.
Conclusion
Incorporating SEO friendly URLs is crucial to enhancing your website’s visibility and user experience. Some general tips for improving your site’s SEO include incorporating target keywords, using hyphens, keeping the URLs short, etc.
We at AlgoSaga believe in enhancing your website for improved search engine ranking and usability with SEO services. Apply the following approaches to design SEO URLs that are user and search engine friendly. Doing so will get you on the path to increased exposure and traffic for your website.