SEO-friendly URLs
What makes a URL good for search engines and users — and how to structure your site's web addresses for better SEO.
A URL is the web address of a page — the text in your browser's address bar. Most people don't think much about URLs, but they do affect both SEO and how trustworthy your site looks to visitors.
Quick summary
Good URLs are short, descriptive, and use hyphens between words. They include your page's main keyword where natural. Avoid long strings of numbers, random characters, or vague words like "page1." Once a URL is set and has traffic or links, changing it requires a redirect — ask us before doing this.
What is a URL slug?
When we talk about a page's URL for SEO purposes, we usually mean the slug — the part that comes after your domain name.
For example, in yoursite.com/seo/page-titles-and-meta-descriptions:
yoursite.comis the domain/seo/is the folderpage-titles-and-meta-descriptionsis the slug
The slug is the part you most often control and optimize.
What makes a URL good for SEO?
A good URL follows these principles:
1. It's readable and descriptive. A person should be able to read the URL and understand what the page is about — without even clicking it.
Bad: yoursite.com/?p=4729
Good: yoursite.com/blog/how-to-plant-tomatoes
2. It includes the primary keyword. Where natural, include the page's main keyword in the URL. This is a light SEO signal — not the strongest factor, but it helps.
3. It uses hyphens, not underscores. Google treats hyphens as word separators (so "page-title" is read as two separate words). Underscores are treated differently — "page_title" is read as one word. Always use hyphens.
4. It's lowercase. URLs are case-sensitive on some servers. Using all lowercase avoids confusion and potential duplicate-content issues.
5. It's short. Remove unnecessary filler words. /blog/how-to-grow-tomatoes is better than /blog/here-is-a-helpful-guide-on-how-to-grow-tomatoes-in-your-garden.
6. It avoids dates in news-style slugs (for evergreen content). A URL like /blog/2019/07/seo-tips will look outdated in a few years. For content you want to stay relevant, omit the date: /blog/seo-tips.
URL structure examples
| Page type | Weak URL | Strong URL |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage | yoursite.com | yoursite.com (homepage is fine) |
| Service page | yoursite.com/page?id=12 | yoursite.com/services/brand-identity |
| Blog post | yoursite.com/?p=829 | yoursite.com/blog/how-to-write-a-brand-brief |
| Location page | yoursite.com/loc1 | yoursite.com/locations/denver |
Folder structure and URLs
Your site's URL structure should reflect how the content is organized. Group related content in folders:
/blog/post-name— all blog posts/services/service-name— all service pages/locations/city-name— location-specific pages
This is called a hierarchical URL structure, and it helps Google understand the relationship between your pages.
Be careful about changing URLs
Always redirect old URLs
Once a URL is live and has been indexed by Google or has links pointing to it, changing that URL can hurt your SEO. If you must change a URL, always set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. This tells Google the page has moved and preserves its ranking. Ask us before changing any live page URLs.
Common questions
Related guides
- On-page SEO explained
- Technical SEO basics
- Internal linking explained
- Page titles & meta descriptions
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