URL Structure

Structuring a URL Correctly

Here are some important points to consider when structuring a URL.

These points are culled from a very comprehensive article written by Rand Fishkin, a co-founder of the prominent SEO company MOZ. The article covers the most fundamental building blocks of SEO—the structure of domain names and URLs.

According to Rand, this list should serve as an "it would be great if we could," not an "if we don't do things this way, the search engines will never rank us well."

  • Whenever possible, use a single domain & subdomain
  • The more readable by human beings, the better for Search Engines too
  • Keywords in URLs: still a good thing
  • Multiple URLs serving the same content? Canonicalize 'em!
  • Exclude dynamic parameters when possible
  • Shorter is preferable to longer
  • Match URLs to titles most of the time (when it makes sense)
  • Including stop words isn't necessary
  • Remove/control for unwieldy punctuation characters
  • Limit redirection hops to two or fewer
  • Fewer folders is generally better
  • Avoid hashes in URLs that create separate/unique content
  • Be wary of case sensitivity
  • Hyphens and underscores are preferred word separators
  • Keyword stuffing and repetition are pointless and make your site look spammy

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