How To Create SEO-Friendly URLs

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📗SEO Resource

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Last updated

Jul 24, 2023 1:08 PM

Author

NJ

Creating SEO-friendly URLs is essential for optimizing your website's search engine rankings and improving user experience.

Here are some best practices for crafting SEO-friendly URLs:

Keep It Concise and Relevant

Keep the URL short and to the point, reflecting the content of the page. Avoid unnecessary words, numbers, or characters that don't add value.

👎 Bad example: www.example.com/seo-guide-for-beginners-in-2023

👍 Good example: www.example.com/seo-guide-for-beginners

Use Keywords

Include relevant keywords in the URL that describe the content of the page. This helps search engines understand the topic and relevance of your page.

Let's say you have a website for a digital marketing agency that offers social media management services, and you want to create an SEO-friendly URL for a page that details your social media management package. Here's how you can do it:

👎 Bad example: www.example.com/social-media-package-details

👍 Good example: www.example.com/social-media-management-services

Use Hyphens To Separate Words

Use hyphens to separate words in the URL. Avoid using underscores or spaces as they can make the URL less readable.

👎 Bad example: www.example.com/seo_guide_for_beginners 👍 Good example: www.example.com/seo-guide-for-beginners

Lowercase Letters

Stick to lowercase letters in the URL to avoid confusion since URLs are case-sensitive.

👎 Bad example: www.example.com/SEO-GUIDE 👍 Good example: www.example.com/seo-guide

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Note: If you are using WordPress.org, you don't need to worry about this step as it is automated.

Use Subfolders

Use subfolders to organize your content hierarchically. This helps search engines understand the structure of your website.

👎 Bad example: www.example.com/seo-guide 👍 Good example: www.example.com/blog/seo-guide

Be Consistent with Your Site Structure

Maintain a consistent URL structure throughout your website. This makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages.

Suppose you have a website about healthy recipes, and you want to create URLs for different recipe categories. Here's how you can do it while maintaining consistency:

Recipe Category: Smoothies

👎 Bad example:: www.example.com/healthy-smoothies

👍 Good example: www.example.com/recipes/smoothies

💡 Explanation: In the non-SEO friendly URL, the category "healthy smoothies" is mentioned directly after the domain. However, to maintain consistency, it's better to use a subfolder for recipes, as shown in the SEO-friendly URL. This way, all recipe-related URLs will follow the same structure, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages.

Canonicalize URLs

If your website has multiple URLs pointing to the same content (e.g., HTTP and HTTPS versions or with and without "www"), use canonicalization to indicate the preferred version to search engines.

Following these practices will help you improve your website's visibility in search engine results and enhance the overall user experience.