# SEO-friendly URL

Category: [Technical SEO](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/technical-seo/) › [URLs & domains](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/technical-seo/urls-domains/) · 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.

## Example

A page with an ID in the path and parameters:

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

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

```txt
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.

*Diagram: Anatomy of a URL.* 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.

## Related terms

- [URL](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/url/index.md)
- [URL structure](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/url-structure/index.md)
- [URL parameters](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/url-parameters/index.md)
- [Dynamic URL](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/dynamic-url/index.md)
- [Static URL](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/static-url/index.md)

## Sources

- [URL structure best practices for Google Search – Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/url-structure)

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Last updated: October 8, 2026
URL: https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/seo-friendly-url/