โ๏ธ
FREE
+50 XP
URL Structure Best Practices
๐
Two URLs, one page
"/p?id=4829 vs /guide/seo/technical-seo/. Both lead to the same page. Which one is instantly clear to a human and a search engine?"
๐ Clean URL โ a short, descriptive page address containing the keyword and understandable without context. It's one of the factors Google considers when assessing relevance.
Rules for Optimal URLs
| Rule | โ Good | โ Bad |
|---|---|---|
| Hyphens instead of spaces | /technical-seo/ | /technical_seo/ or /technicalseo/ |
| Lowercase letters | /seo-guide/ | /SEO-Guide/ (creates duplicates) |
| Keyword in URL | /core-web-vitals/ | /page?id=1234 |
| Brevity | /seo/crawling/ | /blog/2019/03/12/how-to-crawl-a-website/ |
| No unnecessary parameters | /product/iphone-15/ | /product/iphone-15/?ref=home&source=banner |
Should You Change Old URLs for SEO?
Be careful! Changing an existing URL requires a 301 redirect. Without it, you'll lose all accumulated links and rankings. Only change a URL if:
- The page is new and hasn't built up links yet
- The current URL causes serious problems (technical parameters, duplicates)
- The benefit of the new URL clearly outweighs the temporary ranking loss
๐
A hasty URL change
"Renamed 500 pages for 'clean URLs', forgot the redirects. Traffic dropped 40% in one week. Took a month to recover."
๐ฏ Practical tip: for new pages, choose the right URL from the start. For old pages with traffic โ don't touch them without a strong reason and 301 redirects.
๐ฎ Test yourself: which character is used to separate words in a URL?
Lesson Task
Test your knowledge and earn +20 XP