SEO-friendly URL Structure

What is a URL?

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator and acts as the location of a web document. Enter a URL in the address bar of your browser and it will take you to your desired webpage.

URL anatomy:

• Protocol is the system used to transfer text and information across the web, and the most common forms are HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) and HTTPS (HTTP secure).

• Subdomain: www

• Domain name is the name of the website, such as eBay, Expedia, or Semrush.

• Top-level domain (TLD) refers to the text following the “dot” in the URL, such as .com, .gov, or .org. Top-level domains classify the domain as a type (educational, commercial, governmental) or by geographic location such as .uk, .au, .ru, etc. Authoritative TLDs such as .gov and .edu in a website’s backlink profile can positively impact SEO.

• The path is the text following the TLD that indicates a specific location (usually a directory, page, parameters, category or landing page) on the website where the page is located.

URL Parameters

URL parameters are additional elements of a URL that are used to help filter or sort content on a website. They can be identified with a question mark (?) and then an equal sign (=) and a number. 

Common uses for URL parameters include:

• Sorting pages of a gallery
• Sorting pages of items in an ecommerce shop 
• Search results on a website’s internal search engine
• UTMs for tracking campaigns

How to Make Your URL Structure Work for SEO:

There are plenty of ways to improve your URLs for SEO. Usually, the best way to plan out effective URLs is to keep in mind the big picture of your website. The structure of your site folders and categories will eventually influence your future URLs.

1. Plan your categories based on search

To make your URLs appeal more to searchers, they should be named with your keywords in mind. This means asking yourself important questions about the main categories on your website. When judging your categories, you should ask yourself:

• Are they directly correlating to your business’ products/services?
• Do they relate to popular searches?
• What phrases are people using to search for your competitor’s services?

If you know how people search for your services, you can structure your categories and URLs to target common search language accordingly.

2. Keep it simple

With URLs, the simpler the better. This starts with simple categories but continues with deeper pages on your site. Simple often means short, and shorter URLs are easier to read and potentially less confusing. If you can read the URL out loud, then it’s probably simple enough for strangers to read quickly and understand. 

According to Brian Dean and John Lincoln, SEO friendly URLs should have 1-2 target keywords and 1-2 folders. Anything more can become confusing or hard to read. Therefore, you should create folders with descriptive names and avoid “dynamic URLs,” or URLs with long strings of numbers at the end, whenever possible. 

The easier to read, the better.

So, let’s sum things up.

SEO-friendly URLs will:

1. Include your keyword
2. Be descriptive and meaningful
3. Easy to read
4. Use relevant categories/subfolders
5. Contain around 3 to 5 words if possible
6. Eliminate stop words (the, and, or, of, a, an, to, for, etc.)
7. Words separated with hyphens