Historically, search engines used to put more emphasis on the structure and content of URLs when determining ranking in their search than they do today. Even still, there are a few techniques that make your links more palatable and trustworthy to search engines, and SEO-friendly URLs generally offer a better experience for the user as well.

Here are the top 7 things to consider when crafting your URLs:

The Very Beginning

Even before we get to the main chunk of link text, let’s focus on the very beginning of the URL. It is best to opt for https instead of http, as the former has a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) which encrypts data and keeps hackers from being able to decipher it. This makes your site more trustworthy and responsible, and is also preferred by Google.

There are those who recommend removing the www from in front of the domain as it is an unnecessary relic of how links used to be designated. It takes extra space and makes the link text longer. This is much more likely a matter of preference than a true SEO matter, so I say the choice is up to you.

User Experience

With that out of the way, let’s focus on a crucial aspect of well-designed URLs – user experience. People who see a link should be able to tell what that page or post is about just from the link text. A string of indecipherable characters is not helpful in this regard and is off-putting for most, often times appearing to be spam or an untrustworthy link.

A clean and easily intelligible URL provides the best user experience and makes it easier for someone to decide whether or not they wish to click on it. When more people click, this improves the page’s ranking in the search results.

Relevant and Concise

Use words that are relevant to the content on the page or post, but keep it short. Many blogs and website builders default to using the page name or post title as the URL text but remember that you can customize this. A post title may be quite long, resulting in a URL that has many extra words and is more difficult to scan quickly by a potential visitor. Small ‘stop words’ such as the, of, and, a, to, etc. can be omitted entirely as they do not contribute much to the meaning. Instead of including the whole title, choose one-three important words whenever possible.

^ This is something I need to work on!

Keyword stuffing – the practice of adding as many keywords as possible in the hopes of ranking higher in search – is a tactic of the past. Google no longer puts much emphasis on ranking based on URL keywords and instead scans the content of the page itself to understand what it’s about. Long, excessive links are going to appear spammy while not helping your ranking, so it’s best to avoid them.

Intelligible and Consistent

When deciding on your keywords, separate them with hyphens. Not separating them makes it very difficult for both the user and the search engines to understand which words are included. Using underscores is also not recommended because they cannot be seen when a link is underlined. Spaces are never used in URLs.

It is important to remain consistent with a site’s URLs to avoid confusion and prevent broken links. Use only lowercase letters, as web addresses are case sensitive for everything after the domain. From there, decide on a link structure and follow it every time you create a new page or post. Consider the hierarchy of your categories and pages while also keeping it simple, intelligible, and logical.

Redirect when Necessary

No one likes broken links, and that includes search engines! If you change your existing URLs, set up redirects so that the old addresses send users to the new links. This prevents those annoying 404 pages and provides a better experience for the user and the search engines.

The best way to avoid needing redirects is to set your URL strategy in the beginning and stick to it. You can also use a broken link checker to scan your site for any broken links that need attention.

Numbers as Words

There is some conflicting advice in this matter, but in general it seems that spelling out smaller numbers is the preferred option. Larger numbers and dates should still be left as numbers, however.

Future-Proofing

And to segue off that last point… avoid dates in URLs whenever possible. For one thing, dates are a long string of numbers that lengthen the link address without adding much value. More importantly however, people want to read current information, not a blog post from 14 years ago! Avoid putting the dates in your URLs and opt instead to continually update and refresh your site’s content so it stays relevant.

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