Add your business to ZipLeaf for free!
 New Zealand Business Directory
How To Structure URLs For Maximum Search Engine Optimisation

By Webstruxure

How To Structure URLs For Maximum Search Engine Optimisation

04/26/2018 Why do we post so much about Search Engine Optimisation on this blog? Because adopting good SEO practices on the Webstruxure website made a major difference to our own business, by greatly increasing the volume of leads and conversions. And if it can make a major difference to our business, then it can make a major difference to yours.
In this post, we dive into a specific aspect of SEO: how to structure the URLs (web page addresses) so that they perform well for Google, and also for your users. We’ve focused here on the less technical aspects of this topic – like any aspect of SEO, you can always get more technical if you want to! Here are seven recommendations for better-structured URLs.
1. Make Your URLs Easily ReadableLet’s start with a straightforward one: URLs that are easily readable by humans are a whole lot better for Google too.
Google’s search results display the URL of a page under that page’s title, and there’s evidence that many users look at the URL before deciding to click on the link. So if your URL is a mess of indecipherable letters, numbers, and special characters, your users will be less likely to click on it – and Google won’t like it so much, either.
Google doesn’t care whether or not you include ‘filler’ words (also known as stop words) such as “and”, “of”, and “the” in your URLS. If your URL is approaching 80 characters, long enough that it may be difficult to read, we suggest removing those. If your URL is no more than 60 characters with stop words included, it may be better to leave them in to increase readability.
2. Include Keywords In Your URLs, But Don’t Go OverboardThere was a time when shady SEO operatives practised stuffing your site with keywords in the belief that, the more often a keyword was repeated in the URL, title, header and body content, the better the page would rank. But Google caught on, and now keyword stuffing is penalised. If your primary search keyword is “snorkels”, then we strongly advise against URLs like this:
zzxx.com/snorkels-and-wetsuits/snorkels/snorkels-and-more-snorkels
Such a keyword-stuffed URL will hinder, not help, your efforts to get your Snorkels product page to rank highly in Google searches.
But it’s still a good idea to include your primary search keyword, in this case “snorkels” in the page URL. This URL clearly labels what the page is about and does not engage in keyword stuffing:
zzxx.com/products/snorkels
Of course, you’re unlikely to be targeting only one keyword – you may have keyword phrases, and you will probably have more than one. That also helps you build a meaningful URL that’s closer to the optimum URL length of 50-60 characters.
3. Your URL, Page Title and Page Header Should Be Closely AlignedHere’s an example of this from the Webstruxure blog:

  • URL: https://webstruxure.co.nz/email-marketing/clean-up-your-mailing-list/
  • Page Title: Clean Up Your Mailing List – Keeping Email Marketing Fresh
  • Page Header: Clean Up Your Mailing List – Keeping Email Marketing Fresh
Here the three elements are very closely aligned – and two are identical.
The correspondence between these three elements doesn’t necessarily have to be so close, but it does need to be evident. The aim is that:
  • Each of the title, URL and page header (the H1 header at the top of your body content) clearly states the topic of the page
  • It is clear that each of these elements is describing the same page
That would be good practice even if SEO wasn’t a factor. If there’s a lot of divergence between the page title, URL and header, then users are likely to get confused about what page they’re on.
4. Use Hyphens Rather Than Underscores Between Words In URLsThis might seem a pretty obscure point, but it can have major implications, because Google treats hyphens and underscores in significantly different ways.
Let’s suppose your page is about snorkels and wetsuits – and those are your primary and secondary search keywords. Which URL should you choose out of these options?
zzxx.com/products/snorkels-wetsuits
zzxx.com/products/snorkels_wetsuits
The answer is: unless you’re selling a product that combines snorkels and wetsuits, choose the former. That’s because Google treats a hyphen as a word separator, whereas it treats and underscore as a word joiner.
In other words, the “snorkels-wetsuits” page could be returned as a search result if the user searches for “snorkels”, “wetsuits”, or even “snorkels wetsuits”. But the “snorkels_wetsuits” page may only be returned if the user searches for “snorkels_wetsuits”, which is probably not what you intended.
5. Avoid Non-Alphanumeric Characters In URLsThis is really an instance of the first point above: you should keep URLs as simple and as readable as possible, but populating them with a bunch of special characters and hash signs reduces readability.
There are two main reasons some URLs have these characters:
  • They are automatically created by your content management system
A good, modern content management system should not include these characters into your URLs. However, if your CMS has not been updated for some time, it may still produce URLs where part of the path includes characters that mean a lot to that CMS, but very little to humans. If your CMS does that, it’s almost certainly time to get a new one.
  • The codes have been deliberately added to aid with social media tracking
This is much more common. News organisations, for example, want to keep track of how their content is shared by users – so if you click on a social share button on a newspaper website, you might end up sharing a URL that looks something like this illustrative example:
zzxx.com/all-the-latest-goss?c_id=1&objectid=12345678
where the “?” introduces a set of parameters that help zzxx.com to track how its content is being shared.
This is a much less clear-cut case than the first reason. In the Internet age, news organisations’ entire business models may depend on accurate tracking of how content is shared, and so the price in URL readability is one they may be prepared to pay.
But if your website is not in the news business, and if your priority is to keep your URLs as simple and readable as possible, you probably don’t need the indecipherable tracking code.
6. Stick To Lower Case“But your site’s headlines are always in Title Case!”, I hear you protest. That’s true – we’ve been told that Google prefers all words in headlines to be in title case, so that’s what we do.
But for URLs, it’s the opposite. To avoid the risk that URLs containing a mix of lower and upper case will be parsed by different systems in different ways, it’s best to stick to all-lowercase in URLs unless there is a specific business requirement to do otherwise.
7. Don’t Put Different Bits Of Your Website In Different Domains Unless It Can’t Be AvoidedNow we’re starting to get into the more technical side of optimising URLs – but we see this issue crop up reasonably often, so it’s worth mentioning here.
All the same, please be aware that in Point 7 we’re attempting a non-technical explanation of a highly technical topic – which is why we haven’t talked in more depth about the use of subdomains, etc. (If you have a specific issue in this area, please contact us.)
Most websites are found at a domain, like this:
webstruxure.co.nz
And you’ll note that our blog is also part of that domain:
webstruxure.co.nz/blog
But that’s not always the case. We sometimes see examples like this:
zzxx.com
where the company’s blog is on a different domain, like this:
zzxxblog.com
There may be genuine, non-SEO reasons why this needs to be the case. But in SEO terms, it’s much better to bring all of your website within the same domain – so a much better option is
zzxx.com/blog
Another, less preferred option is to use a subdomain of the main domain, such as blog.zzxx.com – but that’s where the more detailed technical SEO issues start to kick in.
As you can see, there is plenty to think about when planning the URLs for your new site – and this article doesn’t go all the way to the deep end of the SEO pool. If you’re starting to feel that you need a swimming instructor before getting in the water, please contact us to find out more about how we can help you with search engine optimisation for your site.

Webstruxure is here to make the web work smarter. Let us know how we can help you for user friendly, mobile friendly and search engine friendly websites. Our services include:
Web design
Content strategy
User experience
Talk to Webstruxure

Tim Jones - Content Strategist at WebstruxureTim Jones – Lord of the WordsTim works as a content strategist and project manager for Webstruxure, helping clients make sure their websites meet user needs and business goals. He is also a published author of fiction and poetry, with seven books published, and has co-edited two poetry anthologies. You can find out more about Tim’s writing on the New Zealand Book Council website.

About This Author

Webstruxure

Webstruxure

We’re Webstruxure. From web design and copywriting to web development and beyond, we design and develop affordable, smart solutions for applications and websites. We’ve been helping clients navigate the online world from our offices in Wellington since 2001. We create and enhance websites and ap…

Read More »

More Articles From This Author

Anatomy Of A Great Ecommerce Website

Anatomy Of A Great Ecommerce Website

10/23/2018 You want to sell things online. Your customers want to buy things online. So what’s the problem?All too often, the problem is your ecommerce website. For every great example of an ecommerce website that works brilliantly for both a company and its customers, there are a whole lot of sites that are... Read More »

Anatomy Of A Great Brand Website

Anatomy Of A Great Brand Website

10/04/2018 A great brand website and a great brand go hand in hand – because these days, many customers prefer to learn about brands from the brands themselves, not from retailers. Likewise, an increasing number of customers prefer to buy directly from the brand’s own website, not from a retailer’s site.... Read More »

Anatomy Of A Great Lead Generation Website

Anatomy Of A Great Lead Generation Website

10/01/2018 Do you want more customers for your business?And if so, does your website help you gain them?You could have the best web design in the world, but if it doesn’t lead to your website visitors turning into customers or clients, then it probably isn’t doing its job.What goes in to developing a great... Read More »

How To Refresh & Revive Your Site’s Outdated Content

How To Refresh & Revive Your Site’s Outdated Content

09/10/2018 Let’s say your blog’s voice is hip, informative, useful, and it brings people to your site. But when they check out Services or About, your site’s static content reads like it was written five years ago, by somebody who didn’t know what you know today … because it was. Your blog has evolve... Read More »

Adding ALT Text To Images: Do You Really Need To?

Adding ALT Text To Images: Do You Really Need To?

08/13/2018 We hope your job is mostly a pleasure. But unless you’re extraordinarily lucky in your choice of work, chances are you sometimes have to do really boring stuff just because it has to be done. For me, adding ALT text to images on websites is in that category. There are few things I find less exciti... Read More »

How To Write Title Tags and Meta Descriptions To Improve CTR

How To Write Title Tags and Meta Descriptions To Improve CTR

08/13/2018 Original post written by Tim Jones for Webstruxure's blog.Title tags and meta descriptions are two elements that can be crafted to entice searchers to click through to your site.image source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/5-deadly-sins-of-on-page-optimization-that-you-should-run-away-from/Title tags*,... Read More »

5 Ways You Can Optimise Your Web Design For Google Search

5 Ways You Can Optimise Your Web Design For Google Search

06/28/2018 Original post by Tim Jones for Webstruxure's blog.On the Webstruxure blog, there’s plenty of valuable information about how to make your web content better for your readers and better for your Google search rankings.But making your website rank higher for relevant search terms in Google searches i... Read More »

Do You Have Experience Writing Web Content For *Insert Industry Here*?

Do You Have Experience Writing Web Content For *Insert Industry Here*?

06/27/2018 Original post written by Tim Jones for Webstruxure's blog.We’ve been asked this question before. And we’re sure it’ll be asked again. Hence the inspiration for this post!Is industry experience important when writing web content?Yes and no. Our industry of expertise is writing content for the w... Read More »

Making The Case For Content: Why Content Needs To Be Put First In Your Website Project Budget

Making The Case For Content: Why Content Needs To Be Put First In Your Website Project Budget

05/17/2018 Original post written by Tim Jones for Webstruxure's blog.Enthusiastic imaginary client at the start of their website developmentproject: “Content is King (or Queen)! Having high-quality, readable, engaging content is the No. 1 priority for our website redevelopment project.”Same imaginary clien... Read More »

Google My Business – Why You Absolutely Need A GMB Listing

Google My Business – Why You Absolutely Need A GMB Listing

04/26/2018 Creating your Google My Business listing is your number one priority in your off page Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy. It’s affordable – in fact it’s FREE! Plus, you’ll be getting your business in front of potentially thousands of customers. Simply keep reading to see how to take a... Read More »

Blogging for Business – Why You Should Start A Blog

Blogging for Business – Why You Should Start A Blog

04/03/2018 Original post written by Briaane Davis for Webstruxure's blog.Blogging is a powerful, inexpensive marketing tool you need to use for your business. Hang on, what is blogging? Alright, it’s 2018 – you probably know! But, just in case, let’s start at the start. A blog is simply a space online th... Read More »

Social Media Sites – Sharing Your Business Content

Social Media Sites – Sharing Your Business Content

03/28/2018 Social Media – that’s what you call the websites and applications designed to allow people to communicate quickly and share content in real time. It’s a bit of a beast. So how do you know which social media sites to use? Where should you share your content?Why should I share content on social... Read More »

The Ultimate Guide To Building Your SEO Website

The Ultimate Guide To Building Your SEO Website

03/21/2018 Hopefully you’ve talked to Webstruxure and you’re ready to go ahead with building your brand new, search engine optimised website. Webstruxure will build you the best tool possible to get a good result in search rankings, however the key to success with SEO is good, quality content.We’ve writt... Read More »

The Good Web Design Checklist

The Good Web Design Checklist

03/19/2018 Web design is about a whole lot more than just the visual appearance of your site – although that is certainly important! Here is a handy checklist of things that you need to take into account when redesigning your existing website or having a new website designed.What Are The Goals Of Your Websit... Read More »