How to Create SEO-Friendly URLs: Tips & Tricks

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URLs aren’t something we think about all the time – they’re hidden and tucked away. But they’re so important, and when done right, they’ll help your site rank well by signalling to search engines that you’re implementing good SEO practices. To get that result, you need to create SEO-friendly URLs when building your website.

In this article, we’ll show you exactly what SEO URLs can do for your site, why they matter, and how you can create them.

What Is an SEO-Friendly URL?

An SEO-friendly URL is your website’s address – and SEO stands for search engine optimization. A lot of people don’t realize that you can personalize a URL. In fact, you can load it up with keywords that perfectly describe the essence of your page’s content.

Top Tip: You should avoid using numbers or dates in your URLs. Not only does it date your content, but you’ll need to constantly update it as time goes on or as the content changes.

Why Do URLs Matter for SEO?

SEO-friendly URLs are a great starting point. But why do they matter? What do they have to offer your web presence?

Here are three of our favorite benefits:

  • Search engine understanding: SEO URLs will steer your target audience toward your website since their search terms will match your keywords.
  • Improved user experience (UX): As users, we all know how awesome a good website experience can be. It brings us back for more and when the UX is brilliant, we’ll send our friends the link. We want to give the same experience to people who visit our website. So if your URL speaks to your audience, they’ll appreciate it.
  • Increased click-through rates (CTR): A well-chosen URL will push your site up the rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). That means you’ll be beating out your competition for attention.

How to Create SEO URLs: Best Practices

Maybe you’ve chosen a website builder and want to start your online journey, or maybe you want to optimize your existing URLs. Whatever it is, we’re just happy to see you optimizing your URLs for SEO – so let’s take a look at these seven SEO URL best practices in more detail:

1. Keep it Simple and Relevant

SEO URLs should be simple. But they need to be naturally relevant to what your website’s about. Avoid any temptation to stuff your URLs with irrelevant words, numbers, or special characters.

Remember, if your visitors squint at your URL in confusion, search engines probably aren’t jiving with it either.

Website Builder Expert article with the URL highlighted
The simpler the URL, the better – it should make sense to the reader and to search engines.

2. Use Targeted Keywords

So we’ve already hinted at this, but it’s a very important step. You have to add targeted keywords to your URL to really maximize the impact – still, that doesn’t mean you can overstuff it with whatever you want.

You want it to be user-friendly and commonsensical. Trust us, it’s a word! Just don’t put it in a URL.

Uran Salon Finder page with URL slug /hair-salons-city/atlanta/
It’s good practice to keep your URL as close to naturally-used search terms as possible.

3. Avoid Duplicate Content

Duplicate URLs for the same page are the SEO equivalent of wearing the same outfit as someone else at a party—embarrassing and confusing. They’ll mess up the results of a search and users will naturally start to question what’s going on.

So make sure you use unique URLs for your pages and be clear about which URL is the default one for the page in question.

Top Tip: You can decide the canonical status of a page yourself. It’s easier than you think, for example by setting up redirects or rel=”canonical” link annotations.

4. Use Hyphens to Separate Words

Hyphens in URLs are like the spaces between words – they help search engines read your URLs with ease.

The reason why? Because if you smash the words together in your URL, they can be confusing, or worse, they can be misread. If your website is called Teachers Talking, look at the difference between www.teachers-talking.com and www.teacherstalking.com.

Use hyphens to your advantage to keep things nice and clean.

5. Keep it Short and Sweet

Imagine URLs as tweets on Twitter. Long ones lose readers and look less clean and definitive. But if you keep your URL structure for SEO short and sweet, users will appreciate it all the more. There’s no need to ramble in a URL.

You’ll also make it a lot easier for people to copy your website’s URL for sharing. If it’s too long, there’s a risk that something at the end of the URL will get lost.

6. Consider the Hierarchy of Your Site

A website hierarchy is the structure of your website and how you organize your pages – and most SEO-friendly website builders, such as Wix, will instruct you on best practices. Your site’s hierarchy should be as easy and logical as possible because that makes it easy for users to find what they’re looking for.

When your URL follows the same structure as the hierarchy, it allows search engine bots to index your website. For example, “www.yoursite.com/blog/seo-tips” clearly shows the “seo-tips” page as a member of your blog family.

7. Use HTTPS

It’s much better to use HTTPS versus HTTP. It’s more secure because it encrypts the data transferred between the user’s browser and your website. Not only does this increase trust with your audience, but it avoids the problem of modern browsers alerting users to the potential insecurity of HTTP sites. This usually drives users away and damages your website’s search rankings.

HTTPS is a ranking signal in itself, which means you have a potential SEO edge. We’re going to be honest – if your website is currently using HTTP, switching over might be a bit of a pain. But it’s really worth it from a long-term perspective.

Security error page saying "Your connection is not private"
Lacking an HTTPS site can cause security concerns for users.

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Summary

There’s so much noise and competition out there – it makes sense to grab onto anything that can give your website a little bit of an advantage, and SEO-friendly URLs are one of the most overlooked but easy things to implement.

Keep those URLs simple and straightforward. Let them be unique, logical, relevant, and packed with keywords and hyphens. Just remember to keep your SEO-friendly URL to a reasonable length and avoid using numbers!

Written by:
Smiling headshot of Amanda Graham
I started writing for Website Builder Expert in 2022. I love copywriting for ecommerce, website, automation, and website brands and I’ve ghostwritten and content strategised for some of the largest multinational brands in the world. I have years of writing experience for the BBC, including documentaries, scripts, and Twitter campaigns. With such a wealth of experience to draw on, some of my best work on Website Builder Expert focuses on topics such as ecommerce strategies, marketing tips, and small business advice. I hope you enjoy my articles!

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