Optimizing Your Website URLs for Quality SEO

SEO is a complex beast. From unique, quality content to keyword usage, image descriptions, backlinks and more, there are a million different things business owners can do to improve SEO rankings. With all the multitudes of SEO-boosting options out there, it can be easy to overlook one very important SEO factor: website URLs.

A good, clean URL without an unnecessarily long query string is more easily deciphered by search engines. From an SEO viewpoint, the ideal URL should be both straightforward and meaningful. The anatomy of a URL should be easy to understand, with relevant keywords such as “marketing” or “Utah” used for classification at the folder and paths level.

The basic SEO-friendly URL will start with a subdomain followed by the domain name (ex: http://support.google.com/) followed by topics, subtopics and descriptions as organized. The best static URL is one where the topic is clear simply by looking at the URL.

For keywords in URLs, the earlier in the URL they appear the more powerful they are for SEO purposes. As URL length and keyword position increases, keyword effectiveness decreases proportionally. So if “Utah” is an essential keyword for your business, keep it toward the left side of your website URL.

Avoid unnecessary CGI parameters in your URLs at all costs. Not only does a URL that ends in “product=5643&sort=price&print=1” look ugly, it can cause search engines to miss vital information in your URL. To top it off, websites with long, dynamic URLs are less user-friendly, with users in Utah and elsewhere less likely to remember the URL or even the name of your website if the link is bogged down with unnecessary “%20”s where spaces used to be.

For specific symbols, it’s advisable to avoid using the pound (#) symbol for content you want indexed. Search engines ignore anything about the # in a URL. Similarly, for related content that is multiple words long, use a dash ( - ) instead of an underscore ( _ ) to separate words in a URL. And always use lowercase for URLs. Mixing uppercase and lowercase can lead to duplicate URLs, which are very bad for SEO.

If you do have duplicate URLs, such as www.mywebsite.com/athing and mywebsite.com/athing both serving the same page, you need to make the executive decision to pick either the www. or non-www. equivalent, and then 301 redirect the other option to the canonical URL.

Rewriting website URLs can be a long and arduous process, but if you take the time to simplify URLs for a more user-friendly experience, both search engines and potential consumers from Utah to the East Coast will be able to find your business’s content more easily.

Natalie Benoy writes for Fusion 360, an SEO and content marketing agency. They write for many other clients as well. Follow on Twitter