Best Way To Structure Your URLs – The Basics

Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on November 27, 2009

They answer to the best way to structure your URLs may vary a little, however I think most SEOs will recommend something very similar what I recommend.

When structuring your URLs two things to consider are how memorable it will be to the end-user, and how it will be treated by the search engine (including how it will be displayed on the SERP). Other than the root domain name, I think the latter is more important than the former. However that could all change in the future.

For now I’ll discuss the basics on good URL structure, and what works best for the average website.

Here are a few URL structuring tips:

Keep your URLs short (3-5 words)
Use descriptive keywords in the URL – where possible.(i.e, domain name, folders and file names)
Separate each word with a hyphen. Hyphens are better than underscores.(although I don’t recommend using hyphens to separate words in the domain name)
Don’t use capital letters

Typically it is going to be easier to search engine optimize your static URLs than it is your dynamic ones.

Example of a bad URL:

http://www.example.com/caterogy1/subcategory4/productgroup3.html

Example of a good URL:

http://www.example.com/clothing/mens/dress-shoes.html

Not only does this type of URL structure help with user click-through, it also helps the search engine identify what your web page is about. And now your website’s URL is search engine optimized.