How Your URL Affects Your SEO: Optimizing Your Pages Down to The Smallest Detail

If you’re here, you’re likely wondering, “Does my URL even affect my SEO?” or “How much weight will my URL really have on my ranking?” And while I would love to say that such a small aspect of your page would barely affect your SEO, that wouldn’t be true.

Your URL affects your SEO more than I would like to admit, mostly because of user behavior and the need for simplicity in an otherwise congested field.

The short answer is yes: your page and blog post URLs affect your SEO and are a few places to utilize your keywords and improve your website’s user experience and trust.

Let’s get into it:

What is a URL? How Does it “Work,” Exactly?

URL stands for “uniform resource locator” and is used to “locate” or access pages of your website (and yes, you can 100% forget that little tidbit of information because it won’t change your life). URLs “work” by sending people to where the resource is located—more specifically, your website.

It’s like an address for your website’s location, except the travel time is less than 1-2 seconds vs. 1-2 hours (at least, it should be if the site is in good health).

Every URL has to be different, or we’d have multiple people trying to have the same page and heading to the same spot. That’s why you buy a domain to make yours unique (or have a unique slug or permalink on a website like Bitly or even Flodesk).

What is the Structure of a URL?

When looking at a URL, you typically see five to six main parts: the protocol, subdomain, root domain, top-level domain, slug, and article permalink.

These parts come together to create the URL necessary to locate and load every website—and every URL is unique to the targeted page.

For simple SEO, you need to focus mainly on the slug section of your URL, which is the easiest to alter when creating your pages, or the article permalink that comes after for your content pages (if you’ve set your URLs to structure this way).

What Makes a URL SEO-Friendly?

To make your URL SEO-friendly, you’ll have to look at the page you’re creating or trying to optimize. For example, the five main pages you’ll need as a service provider (Home, About, Contact, Services, & Blog) should remain simple, like /about, /contact, /services, and /blog, respectively.

But with a specific offer or unique page, you’ll want to keep it as simple as possible while also not confusing your audience—for example, if you have a podcast, leave your page slug as /podcast. If you have a course, use the course name or shorten the course name, but avoid using acronyms UNLESS that’s how you refer to it in your marketing.

How to Structure a Blog Post URL for SEO:

As for your blog, you want also to keep it simple. While it was common to include everything in your URL (your post date, category, subcategory, blog post title, and author), keep the bare minimum of what you need.

Your URL should be structured to deliver the information of your content without cluttering the search bar. Good URL structure should also include your primary keyword (if possible) and keep in mind the purpose of your content, such as considering whether the article/blog post is a content pillar or if the keyword you’re attempting to rank for is a long-tail keyword.

The correct way to structure your URL is: www. yourwebsite . com / keyword or / long – tail – keyword

For example, for this article, my goal is to rank for “How to Structure My URL When Blogging” and “Correct URL Structure for SEO” so the end of my URL may look like:

/how-to-structure-urls-for-seo

Keep it simple, straight to the point, and adaptable (in case you update your content later, which I recommend you do at least once per year).

What NOT to Include in Your URL

While listing the do’s and don’ts on URL structure sounds a bit funny to me—it does come in handy. So, now that we’ve covered the correct structure of a URL, here are a few things you should avoid:

• Special Characters: They won’t show up in your URL after being published.
• Numbers: You want to be able to update yearly (or whenever); keeping numbers out ensures adaptability—unless they’re part of your offer name.
• Extra Filler: There’s no need. Boil it down to the bare minimum!

Final Thoughts on SEO-Friendly Blog URLs

The great thing about URLs is that they’re super easy to customize and take little to no additional time in your content marketing strategy. For something so simple, it makes sense to take this little extra step when it could help your website show up on Google (which is the whole point of SEO, right?).

Although URL structure is not the only consideration when creating your web pages and getting your blog content to work in your SEO strategy, it’s a step in the right direction.

Finally, if you’re looking to outsource your SEO or simply want to skip the guesswork and have it optimized on the first go-’round, book your SEO Audit + Optimization and start putting your website to work 😉