How To Create SEO-Friendly URLs: Tips & Tricks

Creating SEO-friendly URLs is just one part of an effective SEO strategy, but why do they matter? How can they benefit your business? To keep things simple, they can:

• Help search engines understand your site – Clear and keyword-driven URLs make it easier for Google to crawl and index your website, meaning your pages are more likely to be shown for relevant search terms
• Improve the user experience – Site visitors won’t want to click on a confusing link if it’s not clear where they’ll be directed, so your URL should follow the rules of your general site structure to help users navigate your pages
• Boost your rankings – With SEO-friendly URLs, search engines will position your pages higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), increasing your website traffic and conversions

Whether you’re looking to get online for the first time or you want to optimize your existing URLs, learn how to create SEO-friendly URLs with these 10 top tips:

#1. Choose a Memorable Domain

Your website’s domain name should represent the brand – keep it catchy, memorable, simple, and easy for customers to remember and type when looking up your business.

Choosing the right domain name for your content and brand contributes to that all-important first impression. You’re telling customers what they can expect from your site, and having a recognizable and familiar name in the URL can help increase trust in your site.

➡️ Learn more about increasing your website’s domain authority with our detailed guide.

#2. Secure Your Website

An important part of any good URL is website security, especially if you want to perform well in the SERPs and build brand credibility and trust. An SEO-friendly URL should include the following:

• HTTPS – Also known as HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure, HTTPS is the safer version of HTTP and a ranking signal to be aware of. It encrypts data as it travels between the user’s browser and your site, and you’ll recognize it visually as the padlock icon in the browser search bar.
• An SSL certificate – Often included with website builder subscriptions, an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate enables your website to use HTTPs.

With these in place, you can avoid the risk of potential customers or website visitors being alerted to a security concern. Most modern browsers now flag when a site lacks HTTPS. So, these security measures are essential if you want to get ahead of the competition in the SERPs and avoid scaring customers away.

#3. Keep It Simple and Relevant

An SEO-friendly URL should be simple and to the point if you want to improve the user experience. I’ve listed some key dos and don’ts below to help you understand what to include:

#4. Use Targeted Keywords

It’s good practice to include target keywords in your URLs to help your pages rank for those terms. Search engines and website visitors will recognize the keyword and have a clear understanding of what the page is about. For example:

• www.yoursite.com/seo-njklk78%/2025/seo-tips-schema/shop

The above URL is messy and confusing. The words “seo” and “shop” jump out at you but you wouldn’t be able to guess what the page is about. It also stuffs in the keyword “seo” a few times, which can result in your site getting penalized by Google for spammy practices.

Here’s an example of a URL using relevant keywords:

• www.yoursite.com/blog/seo-tips

It’s simple and specifically targets “SEO tips” as a keyword, so anyone looking for more information on this topic can easily find it.

#5. Short Is Better

There’s no need to ramble when creating a URL – short and sweet is best. It’s more user-friendly, easier to read and understand, and quick to type or share with others.

That said, you shouldn’t sacrifice clarity to trim your URL down. Make sure the page URL remains descriptive and accurate of the content it’s linking to, without overwhelming visitors and search engines with overly long URLs. The shorter you can keep your URLs, the easier your site is to navigate, crawl, and rank.

What Length Should Your URL Be?

The recommended length for SEO-friendly URLs is between 50 and 60 characters – this includes all parts of the URL, such as the domain, subfolders, and slug. However, there’s no set rule on how long your URL should be, and the length won’t affect your rankings. That said, anything longer than 60 characters is at risk of getting cut off in the SERPs, and it might seem unnecessarily wordy.

#6. Use Lowercase Letters

This is pretty common sense, but you shouldn’t use capital letters in your URLs. It’s unlikely you’ll see examples of capital letters when searching the web since most modern web servers value capital and lowercase letters equally, meaning there’s no major impact on the user experience.

Unfortunately, not all servers can decipher the difference between lowercase and uppercase letters. Because of this, stick to the standard lowercase format to avoid duplicate content appearing in the SERPs and impacting your rankings.

#7. Avoid Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can confuse users and search engines. If you have matching or slightly similar content on multiple pages, despite them having different URLs, you risk cannibalizing your content and impacting your site’s performance in the SERPs.

For example, a URL named www.yoursite.com/seo-urls and a URL named www.yoursite.com/seo-friendly-urls would direct you to different pages – but they’re ultimately competing against each other. Readers might not find the answers they want, and search engines will struggle to crawl your site properly.

To combat this, I recommend auditing your site and reviewing its existing content regularly so you can identify potential issues. You want each page to have value, and if you have multiple pages offering the same information, you risk diluting its impact.

#8. Use Hyphens to Separate Words

A key way to make your URLs are SEO-friendly is to include hyphens. This improves readability and helps search engines understand your content. Google recommends using hyphens, instead of underscores or nothing at all, to separate words in your URL – this is the difference between reading “teacherstalking” and “teachers-talking.”

As you can see, hyphens break up the words so they’re easy to read. It’s another method of keeping your URLs clear, descriptive, and user-friendly.

#9. Avoid Dates

You should avoid using numbers or dates in your URL. Not only does it quickly date your content and make your URL extra long, but you’ll also need to constantly redirect your page as time passes. This is extra work that you don’t need, especially when managing a business, and it can cause confusion in the SERPs.

You should only include a date in the URL if it’s relevant to the content topic and you can’t foresee updating the page in the future. For example, our TikTok trends for March article specifically talks about content ideas for that month, so it makes sense to include the date in the URL.

Generally, though, it’s best practice to keep dates out of your URLs. I recommend changing your permalink settings so they don’t default to showing a date in your URL slug, or you can edit your page’s URL manually before publishing. If you have to remove or change a date in your URL, you can set up a 301 redirect, but I wouldn’t recommend leaning on this option too often.

#10. Consider the Hierarchy of Your Site

Your website hierarchy refers to the structure and organization of your pages. This helps visitors find the content they’re looking for, and search engines can crawl your site with ease. For example, “www.yoursite.com/blog/seo-tips” makes it clear that the “seo-tips” page sits in the blog category of the site.

• Limit the number of subfolders – if your URL includes more than two subfolders (marked by the slashes between text), you risk making your URL too long and complicated, but you should still make sure the subfolders you use make sense for that page
• Look to SEO website builders for advice – Builders like Wix offer SEO best practices to follow as you build your site’s structure and optimize your navigation 

The number of subfolders you include in your URL won’t directly impact your rankings, but it can affect the user experience, which Google factors into its algorithm.

The 10 top tips I’ve shared should give you a clear idea of what makes a “good” and SEO-friendly URL. But, what does an optimal URL actually look like?

❌ www.yoursite.com/shop/apparel/hats/womens/womenshats2025
✅ www.yoursite.com/shop/women/hats

The first URL is complex, and you can’t immediately identify the context of the page at a glance. It goes against the best practices I’ve shared throughout this article – it’s unnecessarily long, uses a date that will date the page quickly, and doesn’t use hyphens, so it’s hard to separate the words.

The second URL keeps things short, simple, and avoids repetition. I can instantly see it’s a store page for women’s hats.

What the experts think...

The best way to write URLs is to keep them short, descriptive, and user-friendly. Separate words with hyphens (e.g., example.com/best-url-practices), as a well-structured URL improves SEO and makes it easier to understand what the page is about. And definitely avoid putting dates in there (e.g., example.com/best-url-practices-2025) since this will age quickly and make the page look outdated when you come to update it later down the line!

Heleana Neil Content Strategist, MVF

With so much competition in the SERPs, you need to grab on to anything that can give your website an advantage. Creating SEO-friendly URLs is one of the most important ways you can ensure your pages are prepared to rank well and improve your site’s user experience and structure.

Remember to keep those URLs simple, short, and keyword-focused while remaining relevant to your site’s content and structure. Most of all, when actioning the recommendations I’ve listed above, keep site visitors and search engines in mind.