Creating an SEO-friendly URL structure is important because both search engines and people care about it. Here’s how and what you should do about it. Don’t judge a book by its cover; What many businesses think about their URL structure! Of course, there’s no denying that your website content is important. This is most important to both people and search engines. However, when competing with millions of other websites to get better rankings, every little detail will count; Leave alone the URL structure which has a huge impact on the appearance of your website. But this is not the end!
Optimized URLs are easier for people to read, an index for search engines, and share with others. So, if you’re looking for a way to stand out from your competitors, rank higher, and get the desired results from your efforts, we’re here to help!
In the following, we’ve put together a complete guide to what a URL is, why it’s important to people and search engines, and last but not least, how you can make the best SEO-friendly URL structure for your site’s pages.
Let’s jump in without further ado.
What is a URL?
URL is short for uniform resource locators. Simply put, it indicates the location of a resource, such as your site address or any other address you use to browse the web.
Have you ever paid attention before clicking on links? They are words separated by slashes, colons, or other punctuation marks. In many cases, you can read the URL and understand what the page will point to when you click on it. This is an example of an SEO-friendly URL structure.
However, sometimes, when you paste the URL address of a site, you will encounter a lot of strange characters followed by question marks or percent signs. Such a URL makes no sense and takes up a lot of space. Would you click a link that looked like this?
http://www.yourdomain.com/home.aspx?ID=115697889526&IT=5f7788d3d
Or would you rather click this one?
http://www.yourdomain.com/compact-system-cameras/company-name/FXT-5-Grey-18-33-lens/
This is why URL structure is important!
Is URL structure important for SEO?
Let me be clear. URL is the address that takes users to your website, right? So, think of it as your home address. How do you want someone to respond when you ask them for their home address? Do you want them to tell you only the name of the city they live in or the exact direction of their house?
A bad URL will only point to the city name and mutter a vague home address. At the same time, an SEO-friendly URL structure will show you the correct numbers and street names with house colors!
What does this have to do with SEO?
Well, SEO is about making a web page more understandable to your target audience. And what does Google care most about? User experience. So, the more work you do on your URL to optimize it for users, the higher Google will rank your web page.
What is an SEO-friendly URL?
There is no single rule for constructing URLs. Every website is different from others and has unique requirements to be perfect. Therefore, the best SEO-friendly URL is structured based on the website’s objectives.
For example, if you have a multilingual website for international users, the URL must cover multiple languages and locations Moreover, the URL of an educational website must be different from that of an online store.
Generally, the best SEO-friendly URL structure would be:
- Purposeful
- Easy to read
- logical
- properly organized
- Easy to browse
- Optimized
- User-friendly
What is the best URL structure for search engines and people?
We know that creating an SEO-friendly URL is important for people and search engines to understand the content inside each link. Now the question is:
What factors should we consider before constructing a URL?
Here, we outline tips to help you create a quality URL and optimize your site.
Find the right structure based on your needs.
As we mentioned, each website should have a unique URL structure based on its needs and objectives. But regardless of the structure, the best URLs are meaningful, easy to remember and convey connections between different pages.
Let’s say you’re looking for a garlic bread recipe. Which of these URLs shows what you are looking for best?
- https://www.yourdomain.com/Make-Garlic-Bread
- https://www.yourdomain.com.au/recipes/garlic-bread/cf756f69-6c19-45ab-aa5c-a74a85a9498b
So, come up with one that is simple and meets the needs of your site.
The shorter, the better
Take this scenario as an example:
You want to share the link on your social media, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., but the URL is too long. Your post takes a lot of characters. Even if you use URL shortening services, the address will not indicate the content of the website. As a result, many people may think it’s spam and won’t click on it.
While keeping URLs short and sweet won’t have much of an impact on SEO, it will affect your site’s traffic. Based on a study of the top 100 results of 1000 keywords, the average length of a URL should be 35-45 characters. Additionally, if you find it difficult to keep your URLs short, don’t use too many escape abbreviations. This will only cause more confusion.
Pro tip: To keep your URLs short, make sure all folders and files on the server are well organized and named correctly. Also, hide unnecessary www prefixes.
Use keywords wisely
A study shows that most people decide to click on a link based on the relevance of the keywords in the URL to their search query. So, choose the URL of each page wisely. Don’t just randomly use keywords in URLs to fulfill your obligations—the words you choose matter to both search engines and people.
Although Google has never announced the impact of keywords used in URLs on site ranking, many SEO experts believe that it makes a difference. Keywords used in URLs help Google crawlers know what the page is about and index it quickly.
So, selecting related keywords will drive traffic to your website and help you rank better in search engines.
Avoid keyword-stuffing
While using keywords is essential to encourage click-throughs and create an SEO-friendly URL structure, using too many keywords will have the opposite result. Google’s latest algorithms focus strongly on keyword stuffing and will consider such websites as spammy.
Consequently, avoid doing this and watch how many keywords you use in a URL. A clear example of keyword stuffing in a URL is as follows:
http://www.example.com/restuarants/US/US-restuarants/US-California-restuarants/
Instead, you can change the above URL to:
http://www.example.com/restuarants/Us/california/
This is a clear example of structuring website URLs and using keywords wisely.
Use the HTTPS protocol, not HTTP
HTTPS is a secure protocol that prevents hackers from accessing your website. It can encrypt your website data, making it unreadable in the event of a potential attack. HTTPS protocol attracts more traffic because users trust it more than HTTP protocol. Especially if you run an online store or website that enables transactions, this factor is important to consider.
HTTPS will affect your Google ranking because it is more secure and trustworthy. Also, some browsers, such as Chrome, will automatically indicate whether a website is trustworthy by indicating a lock icon before a site’s URL. You can also click on the icon and read more details about the connection.
A hyphen is better than an underscore
Some developers or designers use underscores to separate keywords. However, Google recommends using hyphens to make the page easier for crawlers to understand. Hyphens make information clearer for web crawlers to analyze and retrieve results.
Do not use prefixes in your URLs
Any extra words including prefixes should be omitted from the URL. For example, using but, and, etc, or, of, an, etc. in URLs is unnecessary. While URLs don’t have an SEO-wise impact, they do make them weird, long, and sometimes hard to remember.
If such words are not removed the URL will become meaningless, removing it is the best decision.
Avoid creating too many subfolders
Burying your page in too many subfolders does not directly impact SEO. However, this will damage the appearance of the URL, making it long and vague. For example, using too many subfolders will leave your page with a URL like this:
https://ww.example.com/home-page/category/general/2022/december/date/author/page-name/
So, to get the best results, organize each page in the corresponding folder. Be more sensitive when choosing folder names.
Use lowercase letters
Finally, use lowercase letters for the rest of the URL after the domain name. Because URLs are case sensitive with respect to characters and using uppercase letters will only confuse users For example, (www.example.com/Blog/) will take you to a 404 page, while (www.example.com/blog/) will take you to the blog page of the related website.
So, to avoid losing traffic and confusion, always use lowercase words. If, by mistake, your URL uses an uppercase letter, redirect it to another page.
Conclusion
Creating an SEO-friendly URL structure is important because both search engines and people care about it. Google crawlers consider URL structure for a solid result. On the other hand, people read the content of a URL before deciding whether to click on it or spam it. So, keep the tips in this article in mind and create perfect URLs for your website pages.
