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URLs & domains

SEO-friendly URL

Also known as: clean URL, readable URL, pretty URL

An SEO-friendly URL (also called a clean or readable URL) is an address that uses readable words to describe the page, so people and crawlers can interpret it without opening the page. It avoids long ID numbers and unnecessary parameters. The term is not used by Google, whose documentation covers the topic under URL structure.

What makes a URL readable?

Google’s documentation on URL structure points to these traits:

  • Readable words rather than long ID numbers.
  • Hyphens between words. Google recommends hyphens over underscores.
  • Consistent casing, since Google Search treats URLs as case sensitive.
  • Words in the language of the audience, with non-ASCII characters percent-encoded where needed.
  • No session IDs, and no parameters that do not change the content.

Google also states that URL structure should help it crawl a site efficiently. Many parameter combinations create many URLs for the same content.

Anatomy of a URLThe example URL https://shop.example.de/shoes/sneakers/?color=red&page=2#reviews broken into parts: scheme https, host shop.example.de with subdomain shop, domain example.de and top-level domain de, path /shoes/sneakers/ with a trailing slash, query string with two parameters color=red and page=2, fragment reviews. The fragment is not sent to the server.Trailing slashhttps://shop.example.de/shoes/sneakers/?color=red&page=2#reviewsSchemeHostPathQuery stringFragmentSubdomainDomainParameterParameterTLDcountry code: ccTLDstays in the browser, is notsent to the serverSchematic. Scheme, host, path, query and fragment are components defined in RFC 3986.Subdomain, domain and TLD split the host by DNS level. Without a port, https uses port 443.
A URL broken into its parts. RFC 3986 defines scheme, host, path, query and fragment. Only the browser evaluates the fragment after #, it is not sent to the server. Sources: RFC 3986: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), Generic Syntax; MDN: What is a URL?; MDN Glossary: TLD.

Example

A page with an ID in the path and parameters:

Text
https://example.com/index.php?topic=42&area=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f730f1

The same page with a readable URL, which is the example Google uses:

Text
https://example.com/wiki/Aviation

Readable URLs are easier for people to interpret. Google adds that converting URLs to a consistent casing helps it recognize identical pages.

Common mistakes

  • Mixing upper and lower case so that one page exists under several URLs.
  • Leaving session IDs or tracking parameters in internal links.

Sources

  1. URL structure best practices for Google Search – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com

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