How To Create SEO Friendly URLS?

Adem Mert Kocakaya - 01 September 2022

Senior SEO/ASO Manager

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

URL structures of websites differ from each other. One URL might be structured for an e-commerce site and another for a blog. In general, it is common to use different URL structures to satisfy the aims and needs of various websites. However, regardless of differences between websites, the URL structure should be SEO-friendly at the end of the day.

So, below we will explain the SEO-friendly URL structure and show how to create SEO-friendly URLs for your website in detail. Yet, before moving on to that section, let’s check the structure of URLs and learn how they are constructed.

WHAT IS A URL & URL STRUCTURE?

A URL is an address, which directs a unique resource on the Internet. It consists of many parts named; protocol, domain name, and a path. 

Each part in a URL is important for SEO practices (such as; using HTTPS protocols, proper TLDs, appropriate subfolders, etc.), but one of the most significant parts of a URL is the slug part. Whenever you create a new page, you have to determine the slug. In this blog post, we will mainly focus on the slug part of URLs by showing some tips to make your URLs more SEO friendly.

Let’s begin with the benefits of the SEO friendly URL structure and continue with some tips which help you to create more SEO Friendly URLs.

WHAT IS THE SEO FRIENDLY URL STRUCTURE?

Compared to unorganized URLs, SEO Friendly URLs are more understandable and easier to read for both users and search engines. It means that SEO Friendly URL structure focuses on meeting the needs of users and search engines in every aspect. Also, SEO Friendly URLs improve user experience by giving a clear idea about the content of the destination page and the site hierarchy. The biggest advantage of SEO Friendly URLs is offering an uncomplicated website structure for users by making content easy to find, read, and understand. Also, URLs are the first place that search engine spiders take into consideration when crawling web pages, as well. Therefore, optimized URLs help search engines deliver the most relevant results to users because they can easily detect pages that include descriptive keywords in their URLs. With the help of descriptive keywords usage in URLs, search engines can match the most relevant pages with the most suitable search queries.

HOW TO CREATE STEP-BY-STEP SEO FRIENDLY URLS?

1-) Customize URLs According To Your Content

SEO Friendly URLs should give information about the content of relevant pages. For this reason, do not use random numbers and characters in URLs. Instead, try to use content-related keywords to make your URLs more SEO Friendly. Additionally, always keep in mind that each page on your website has a specific purpose and target group. That’s why you should edit URLs to give an idea about your page.

2-) Use Only Relevant Keywords

SEO Friendly URLs should contain 1-3 keywords that should also be in the title and meta description of the relevant page to emphasize the topic for both users and search engines. In addition to this, do not use unnecessary keywords to rank for different search queries because search engines can consider your page as spam. Use only the most relevant keywords which are related to the topic and target group of the page.

3-) Don’t Use Long & Complicated URLs

URL optimization aims to create readable and less confusing URL structures to enhance user experience. So, keep your URLs short and simple enough for both users and search engines to increase comprehensibility.

4-) Remove Numbers & Special Characters

When you want to update or edit numbers of existing URLs (such as increasing the number of given tips in a post from 4 to 6 and indirectly in the URL) for pages, you have to redirect the old URLs to new ones to keep them up to date. Changing and redirecting the URLs are not a big deal, however, it’s still highly possible to forget the necessary updates each time. Thus, we recommend you remove numbers in URLs to prevent all kinds of problems that you encounter in the future.

Special characters and symbols belong to the unsafe zone of SEO practices because they can cause broken linking problems. For example, square brackets ([]), backslashes (()), and percentage sign (%) are some of the unsafe characters that you should avoid using in URLs. Special characters (including commas, semicolons, etc.) make URLs harder to read for users and search engines, too. You can read more about the unsafe characters in URLs from here. Therefore, remove all special characters from your URLs to stay in the safe zone by making URLs more compatible with SEO practices.

5-) Don’t Use Stop Words

Stop words (such as “and", “or”, “to”, “an”, etc.) are generally ignored or filtered by search engines. They make URLs longer and more complicated to read, as well. For having more SEO-compatible URLs, remove those words to minimize redundancies in URLs because they look clear and better by deleting stop words.

6-) Use Lowercase Letters

Technically speaking, URLs are case-sensitive after the domain name and uppercase letters may cause some problems, such as 404 pages or duplicate content. Thus, use lowercase letters in your SEO URLs to avoid unwanted issues with URLs.

7-) Use Hyphens To Separate Words

Best SEO practices use hyphens between words instead of other special characters because hyphens are more likely to increase the readability of URLs. They are also more common to use in practice that enhances user experience. For this reason, use hyphens to make your URLs more SEO friendly.

SEO Friendly URLs & More

These are some of the most important SEO best practices to consider while creating a customized URL structure for your page. Use these SEO URL tips to make your website more SEO friendly and attract the attention of users and search engines! If you have more questions about SEO friendly URLs or need any help related to SEO, do not hesitate to contact our team!

References:

• https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-friendly-urls/ 
• https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/urls 
• https://blog.alexa.com/how-to-write-an-seo-friendly-url-using-the-best-keywords/ 
• https://www.designpowers.com/blog/url-best-practices 
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Common_questions/What_is_a_URL 
• https://moz.com/learn/seo/url 
• https://perishablepress.com/stop-using-unsafe-characters-in-urls/