How to Write The Best URL Structure for SEO

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Many SEO factors affect your SERPs ranking. And optimize URLs are high on the list. Well, an optimized URL structure is crucial for both search engine optimization and user experience. As page titles describe the page, URLs also do the same job for search engines and visitors. To build accurate, convenient and well-structured URLs.  

The building URL structure for SEO might seem straightforward, but it is not. You have to build your URL by keeping in mind the future trends and goals. Along with doing this, it may often be that your URLs are overlooked. 

URLs are building blocks of any effective website. It can make or break your website traffic. As URLs are read by both – humans and search engines, it is difficult to build SEO URL structure which will please both.      

What Is The URL?

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. URL works as your address on the web. And you can also say that it is the specific address of a piece of content on the web.

It is a direct way to visit any page of any website. URLs start with www or https. URLs always start with your website’s root domain. Say for example www.yourwebsitename.com

What Are SEO friendly URLs?

SEO friendly URLs are the one that is designed to meet the needs of SEO. users and searchers. If we go further on this, URLs optimized for SEO to boost SERPs ranking. By keeping in mind the users and search engines URLs are designed. SEO friendly URLs tend to be short and keyword-rich.   

How Does The URL Structure Matter in SEO?

If you go through Google’s search engine optimization starter guide you will find that it is necessary to create descriptive categories to keep your website well organized. Google says that informative filenames and categories are crucial to easily understand the webpage. Thus it leads to better crawling by search engines. 

If your URL contains relevant words then it will provide users and search engines more information compared to odd name parameter would. And it is a fact that most of the results of SERPs contain relevant keywords in the URL structure. If the URL structure is done well then it will make the indexing process easy.

It is because the URL structure gives Google bots crawlers some context about your web page, what your page is about. Web page’s title tags, content and link anchor text are also used for the same purpose. Search crawlers combine information from all the elements and get a better idea about your page.      

There is also an ideal length of URL on Google. Research says that URL length can be anywhere between three to five words. From this, it is clear that you have to build a short URL. And it will work best as per SEO perspective.  

As Google consistently provides relevant results for searchers it is necessary to know about every indexed page and what is about. And URL is one of the most important parts of the page in which Google looks at to determine the page. 

The intuitive URL structure will make your site easy to navigate for users. Say for example if any user browsing the clothing site and find them on the page www.clothesretailer.com/mens/dresses/nameofspecificdress  then they will get to know that the page belongs to two categories. 

If any savvy person is going through this URL then he/she also knows how to easily choose the larger selection of men’s clothes. He/she just delete the last couple of parts of the URL (dresses/nameofspecificdress)

As the intuitive URL structure works for users, it will work for search engines too. Search engine crawlers can easily identify relevant connections between different pages of a website. Well, a structured URL helps crawler to understand different categories of websites and how they are related to each other.    

Best Practice to Create URL for SEO

The following are the best techniques to create SEO friendly URLs. Go through the practice below to optimize the URL for SEO.  

Use Primary Keyword

One of the best practices to optimize URL for SEO is to put the keyword in the URL structure. It is also important to put the keyword at the beginning of the URL as search engine crawlers do not give such significance to the words which come into the end of the URL.    

Along with this, also keep in mind that you do not have to overuse keywords in URL. Search engines can identify keyword stuffing and your website gets penalized for this thing. 

If the web page is for a blog post, usually the blog’s headline contains the main keywords which clearly describe the content of the page. Pull out the primary keywords from the headline and add in the URL structure.   

Use Hyphens to Separate Words

You can not use space in the making of URL structure. Use hyphens to separate words in the URL. It will know Google where the breaks between words are. It will also be easier for visitors to understand the URL. 

To separate words use of hyphens is important for user readability and search engine optimization. Google recommends using hyphens instead of underscores in making of URL structure. Because hyphens treated as spaces between words and underscores connected words are viewed as one word.   

Keep Your URL Short and Simple

Keep your web page URL descriptive and short as possible. A short URL is easy to read and quick to type. You can note that Google URLs are short and to the point. Although, the fewer the words in the URL the more value each word receives from the search engine crawler. 

Also, make you are not putting any unnecessary words and characters in the URL. Avoid keyword stuffing as similar words in a URL leading to a drop in SERPs ranking. 

Avoid Using Stop Words

Generally, stop words are used to connect the main words so that they can make sense logically and semantically. 

Mostly, search engines ignore the stop words. So why do I want to make URLs long unnecessary? Drop this stop keywords together and make your short and readable. Following are some example of the stop words: 

• A
• An
• On
• Of
• As
• At
• The 

Take Care With Subdomains 

Search engines treat subdomains as a different entity from the primary domain. So this can affect many aspects of SEO including link building and trust value. 

If you don’t have a specific reason to use a subdomain. Then it is always advisable to use subfolders for that. URLs from the root domain will improve ranking. Go with the following URL examples for it.

Optimized: https://www.yourdomainname.com/topic

Not Optimized: https://topic.yourdomainname.com

Use Static URLs

Use a static URL for your webpage. Avoid using dynamic URLs. Static URLs are not changeable and they remain constant with each page load.

Not to use unnecessary parameters like ? & and =. As it is a common feature of dynamic URLs. Static URLs are friendly for both users and search engines. So avoid using hard coding dynamic URLs in your site.    

Limit Folders

Any URL should not contain unnecessary folders. Use only needed folders and characters in the URL structure. The pleasant your site URL is always better for users and search engines.

Stay on the main categories which are important for making your website URL intuitive. Be consistent as possible in the making of the URL structure you are using across your website. 

Use Canonical Tags

This practice is a little bit technical but it is very important. Nobody wants Google to register different versions of the same page as distinct pages on your website. So if you have the same content page tied to more than one URL for any reason then you are diluting SEO value.    

This happens when you have two versions of web page one with “HTTP” and one without it. And if you have secured version of your site starting with “https”. So any of the reasons is there you want each URL structure of web page to be consolidated. 

So for this, you need to use canonical tags. Canonical tags can tell Google that a specific URL is like a master copy. You can get rid of the duplicate content problem with this.  

Canonical tags are important because without them SERPs ranking can be split. If you have page A and Page B with different traffic potential then using canonical tags you can create a master copy to get better ranking. Although canonical tags are not directly linked to URL structure, they can affect your SEO.     

Conclusion

Use these best practices for SEO friendly URLs. It will boost your site ranking and entice users to visit your page. Always keep users in mind and optimize your URL. Build SEO friendly URL structure and keep your eyes out for the changes in the world of SEO.