A well-optimized URL structure is valuable for both user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO). But knowing when to optimize your URLs is just as important as knowing how.
But before we talk about when and how, we have to address the why. The goal of optimizing URLs is, of course, SEO performance improvement. But everything the search engines know about a page, its place in the site, and its value to people is tied to a URL.
Optimizing URLs changes the address that all of that information is tied to, and can have negative performance implications, at least in the short term. Depending on the site, the impact can turn into an ongoing issue, even when you 301 redirect the existing URLs.
Still, there is a time to optimize URLs to squeeze out every little bit of SEO advantage.
Knowing when to optimize URLs and when to leave them alone, even if they don’t tick every box for optimal URLs, is critical.
The best time to optimize URLs is when you’re building a new site. This is the time to follow every guideline closely, use relevant keywords (but not too many), remove unnecessary folders and characters, and follow all of the other recommendations.
Platform migrations impact SEO in a lot of ways. But most importantly, the way the platform generates URLs usually forces a URL change.
If the URL has to change anyway, it’s a great time to optimize the new URLs that the platform will produce for SEO benefit. The site will almost certainly see a performance change with the migration and URL change, usually temporarily negative, but then hopefully growing to the positive.
Don’t forget to 301 redirect the existing URLs when you migrate.
In most cases, optimizing URLs on an existing site without being forced to change them due to a migration is a bad idea. The benefit to organic search just isn’t there, and the potential performance downsides are real.
Even if it goes well, the measurable improvement to organic search performance from optimizing URLs on an existing site is usually disappointing. From a technical SEO standpoint, optimizing URLs on an existing site is just not that important because:
In fact, to underscore that point, Google search analyst John Mueller, who communicates regularly with the SEO community, had this to say on LinkedIn in November 2024:
“Often SEOs over-focus on URL structure (imo) — if the context of your pages isn’t clear from the … text on the page, then the URL structure isn’t really going to fix that.”
If you’re asked to change URLs, for example, because of a management mandate, your first step should be educating the requester about the slim upside for SEO and the larger potential for negative impact. If that fails, the best you can do is:
When you optimize URLs, there are elements that impact SEO and others that impact user experience UX. The following elements impact SEO.
URLs with many dynamic parameters (e.g., www.example.com/search?q=keyword&category=custom-labels&page=2) can create canonical issues and lead to duplicate content. Instead, use static, descriptive URLs for pages you want to be indexed, in order to rank and drive organic search traffic and conversions.
All URLs should use only alphabetic characters (a, b, c) or numeric characters (1, 2, 3). The alpha characters should all be lowercase to avoid case-based duplicate content. The same URL with a single uppercase character in it is actually a completely different URL to a search engine, and can be crawled and considered for indexation as a unique page. This creates self-completion, bloats the index, and burns crawl equity.
Do not use special characters in URLs. Examples of special characters include exclamation points, spaces, carats, foreign symbols, registered trademarks, or any other character that will need to be represented in ASCII encoding.
Search engines use hyphens (-) to separate words in URLs. Underscores (_) are treated as word joiners, making the URL harder to understand.
Decide whether to use trailing slashes at the end of your URLs or not (e.g., www.example.com/page/ vs. www.example.com/page) and implement it consistently. Use canonical tags and 301 redirects to enforce your preferred canonical version.
Content to the right of hashtags within URLs is ignored by search engines because hashtags designate an “in-page” anchor or fragment, not a new, crawlable URL. Do not place any information important to loading page content to the right of a hashtag in a URL, or that information will not be crawled by a search engine.
HTTPS secure protocol is an algorithmic ranking signal for Google, one of its user experience ranking signals.
It’s far easier to track performance when the URL has a designator you can segment by. For example, Shopify collection pages always contain a /collections/ folder, and PDPs always contain a /products/ folder. That allows you to track performance by page type, as well as by specific category or page.
Inconsistency in your URL structure can confuse search engines and create a tangled mess of duplicate content and areas of unindexed content in the index. Establish a clear URL structure and stick to it across your entire website.
Other elements don’t impact SEO directly, but can impact UX if the searcher or visitor notices the URL in the address bar, in search results, or in offline documentation like brochures or offline advertising. Pay attention to the following six elements that can affect UX.
This one is more important to UX than SEO. Shorter, simpler URLs are easier for users to remember, type, and share. Search engines can crawl and index long URLs just fine; this is not an issue, despite statements to the contrary by those with older SEO advice.
Although keywords in URLs have a very small impact on relevance signals for SEO, the use of keywords in URLs has more of a benefit to UX. Search engines do not place strong emphasis on keyword use in URLs because it’s such an easy signal to game. You will find SEO professionals who will tell you that keywords are a strong signal for SEO, but evidence and statements from the search engines themselves point to the contrary.
A descriptive URL gives users and search engines an immediate idea of what the page is about before they even click. Craft URLs that are human-readable and accurately reflect the content.
Stop words (articles and prepositions like “a,” “an,” “the,” “in,” “on,” “for”) are generally ignored by search engines and can make URLs unnecessarily long and cluttered. Remove stop words from URLs unless they are essential for clarity or maintaining the meaning of the keyword phrase.
A well-organized URL structure provides a clear hierarchical path for users to help them understand the structure of your site. This matters primarily for those who still prefer to browse a site rather than search a site.
Inconsistency in your URL structure can confuse users. Establish a clear URL naming convention and stick to it across your entire website.
By following these 15 best practices, you can create a URL structure that drives value for both SEO and UX as you build a new site or migrate to a new one. But think hard before optimizing the URLs on an existing site. The benefit for SEO will be small, and the organic search performance downside can be quite large.
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