How to Create SEO Friendly URL Structure?

How to Create SEO Friendly URL Structure? Well, optimized URL structures are vital for search engines and user experience. Search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and Bing) factor many variables into their decision-making process, and URLs are at the top of the list. The page title on the web page and its URL help search engines describe a web page to potential visitors, meaning they should be specific, accurate, well-structured, and enticing.

Most website owners work hard to create their website, write great content, and have the best UI & UX to make it look more engaging. However, an element usually ignored or missed out on is the URL and its structure.

What is a URL structure?

URL structure is the anatomy of a URL. It’s made up of three main components;

Protocol
The domain name
Path or Directory.

A URL structure could be clean or slovenly. It can also either be Search Engine Optimization friendly or dynamic.

What is an SEO-friendly URL structure?

An SEO-friendly URL accurately depicts the page, using easy-to-understand keywords for both crawlers and users. An optimized SEO-friendly URL looks short and clean. It gives a better user experience, is easy to share, and is optimized for search engines like Google. An SEO-friendly URL structure can allow a page to reach a higher position on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Example of an SEO Friendly and well-structured URL.

” https://www.auditmyseo.com/on-page-seo-checklist/ “

This URL includes keywords like URL structure, SEO friendly URL structure, and also describes what the page is about while being easy to memorize.

Example of Bad structure & unoptimized URL:

” https://www.auditmyseo.com/blog/q-1234?-wjszy/p00%20xpwjgl “

To create an SEO-friendly URL, you need to consider many factors. Here are some vital best practices to create SEO-friendly URLs.

Use Keywords

Many people and SEO experts question whether using keywords in URL would help. Well, according to Matt Cutts, who heads Google’s web spam team, “keywords in the URL do help”. They assist to improve the rankings of your webpage in Google Search Results. It was also witnessed that, keywords at the beginning of URLs have more impact than at the end of it.

Avoid Special Characters

Special characters are like #,@, $, %20,&, or more shouldn’t be used when you’re creating an SEO-friendly URL. The reason being they can create problems in Search Engine Optimization or might cause links to break.

Match URLs to Titles

The URL of a webpage should exactly match the title of it. This might help the reader to understand that both are closely connected.

Use Hyphens Not Underscores

Using Hyphens is vital for both user readability and search engine optimization. Search Engine bots don’t understand special characters like underscores as a separator and will reduce the words together if used in a URL. This damages the best practices for SEO-friendly URLs.

Keep URLs short & concise

The URL of a web page should be as clear and brief as possible. URLs that have over 60 characters aren’t good for SEO. In contrast, short URLs do work better than long URLs. After all, these are quicker to type and easy to read. Too many similar keywords in a URL can be viewed as keyword stuffing.

Lowercase, Uppercase, and spaces in URL

John Mueller affirmed that URL cases don’t make any difference; notwithstanding, keeping it consistent all through the site is fundamental. SEO Experts around the globe actually suggest using lowercase URLs protocols. So, don’t create back-end groups to make URLs like domain.com/CATEGORY1. Instead, use something like domain.com/category1. Having an all lowercase protocol is more comfortable to remember and write.

SEO cordial URLs are important. So before you start entangling things, ask yourself, “Who do you think about while doing SEO, the client, or the calculation?”.

All things considered, Google is always refreshing its calculation by remembering clients. Thus, consider clients when you execute these tips. One thing to recall, don’t change URLs just to keep it short or brief. After all, there’s still some danger related to using 301 redirections.

Keep it simple

With URLs, the easier, the better. This starts with straightforward classes however proceeds with more profound pages on your site.

Straightforward usually implies short, and shorter URLs are easier to use and even less confusing. Assuming you can recite the URL, so anyone can hear, it’s likely straightforward enough for strangers to use quickly and understand it.

As per Brian Dean and John Lincoln, SEO agreeable URLs ought to have 1-2 objective watchwords and 1-2 organizers. Otherwise, these can become confusing or difficult to remember. So, use descriptive names and avoid “dynamic URLs”, or URLs with long series of numbers toward the end.