How to Create SEO friendly URLs – SEO Optimization

Other than doing SEO while writing, creating articles with SEO friendly URLs is also one of the basic things in search engine optimization.

create SEO friendly URLs

What is SEO friendly URLs

SEO friendly URLs are normal URLs created in a way to fulfill the expectations of users and search engines. Specifically, SEO friendly URLs have more keywords and short.

Why SEO friendly URLs are important

URLs are not major ranking factors in search engines, but it also has some effects on SEO. Because of URLs, your ranks not lowered down in search engines.

Before times if you don’t did your URLs SEO friendly, then its time add URLs checking in your blogging checklist

Other than title tags, meta description, in the content itself, anchor link text, the search engines will read your URLs to know more about your content.

Google offers a dedicated guide on their page, to understand how search engines use URLs.

how the search engines use urls

Best ways to create SEO friendly URLs

Use the keyword in URLs

target more keywords in the url, to make it seo friendly url

Use the keyword in the URL. Specifically, the used keyword should be the primary keyword, for which the page is ranking.

By using your main keyword in the URL, the users and google can easily know about your page.

For example – here’s my post blogging checklist for WordPress blogs

My targeted keyword was “blogging checklist”

So my URL was https://foxblogging.com/complete-blogging-checklist/

An info-graphic from a search engine land website gives detail about creating SEO friendly URLs.

Use Top Level Domain (TLD)

use top level domains (.com domain)

By using the TLDs, the user’s trust can earned easily.

When considering globally, the .com domain considered as a top-level domain. 

Most of the times try to get .com domain rather than, .pro, .biz, .site, .info.

I am not saying completely avoid other domains, but .com domains considered internationally for trusted sites.

Top-level domains don’t have any direct effects, but it creates a quick trust with humans. When humans are repeatedly coming to your site, then it increases your SEO score.

It doesn’t a problem if you already bought a domain other than .com.

Then buy only, .com domains in the future.

You can also use some TLDs to targeting the particular user and from geo-locations.

For example, you can also use TLDs like

  1. .us – for targeting united states users
  2. .in – for targeting the users in India
  3. .asia – for targeting Asian users
  4. .eu – for europe

Check out – Write SEO friendly articles with on-page optimization

Length of the URLs

The length of the URL also one of the major things in SEO.

Always the shorter ones work better.

Yes, you don’t need to have your complete post title in the URL. Instead, make your URLs short and targeted with keywords.

According to research by Backlinko, the shorter URLs perform better in the search engines.

length of the url should be short to make it- seo friendly urls

for example – take your reading article as an example

normal URL looks like https://mydomain.com/create-articles-with-seo-friendly-urls

short the URL to

use short urls- to create seo friendly urls

When shortening the URLs, the meaning of the topic need not to be changed.

Use hyphens between the words

For separating words in the URL, use only hyphens (-). Don’t use nothing other than hyphens.

Using underscores (_) is not advisable.

For example, the URL link from a post on my site, 

The post title is blogging checklist for WordPress blogs 

The URL is “https://foxblogging.com/complete-blogging-checklist”

I have been used the hyphens to separate the words.

And also don’t use the words without hyphens like – https://foxblogging.com/completebloggingchecklist/

It is much more difficult to read for search engines and human users.

Use URL characters between 50 to 60, to create an SEO friendly URLs, and it performs better in search engines.

These are the words from google, avoid underscores (_), instead use only the hyphens (-).

use only hypens in the urls, not underscores- to create seo friendly urls

Stop words are words that add little value. Most of the times it can safely removed. By removing the stop words your urls could be shortened.

search engines do not consider these stop words, so safely remove it without changing the meaning.

some stop words are – all, are, and, any, at, be, do,

For example–if your post title is

 “10 ways to rank your pages in google”

The default link would be looked like

domainname.com/10-ways-to-rank-your-pages-in-google

Change it by removing the stop words

domainname.com/rank-pages-google

Use lowercase

In modern days, it doesn’t make any difference. But sometimes using uppercase in URL leads to error.

It happens because of, some servers don’t read the uppercase letters

Use HTTPS, not HTTP

In these days online security is very important.

With the increasing number of cyber crime attacks, show your users they are entering the secured connection.

Google also states that they use HTTPS as a positive ranking signal. 

Google itself says that the sites with HTTPS have a ranking advantage, and HTTPS is used as a ranking signal

use https, to rank higher in goolge (buy ssl)

So use HTTPS instead of HTTP.

HTTPS stands for “Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure “

In HTTPS, the information on a website encrypted and has more security. The HTTP is an insecure connection.

If your website now doesn’t have HTTPS, then we recommend you to quickly switch over to it.

The HTTPS ensures your sites identity.

 By getting the SSL certificate from your hosting providers, ensure the https to your website. If you don’t have it earlier, get it now quickly.

What is an SSL certificate

SSL certificate acts as a verification of the website’s security. It ensures the security of the users when they connected to your site.

There are different types of SSL certificates available in the market. 

For exampleNamecheap is one of the famous SSL certificate providers for your every need.

Below you can see their different SSL certificate plans of Namecheap

buy ssl - to create seo friendly urls

You can choose the plans based on your needs

buy ssl certificate- to create seo friendly urls

By clicking buy now,

choose the number of years you need to buy it.

namecheap, buy ssl for https

If you had any promo code then apply, if not click confirm order

namecheap ssl certificate - https

After purchasing it, you can activate it from the account panel. After that, you will receive instructions to install the SSL certificate.

You can manage your SSL certificate from your account panel (including extension and removal).

Avoid using dates

In the earlier days, the dates used in the URLs. in modern days it mostly avoided, but someones are still using it.

using dates in urls increses your length of url

Using dates in URLs is a really bad idea.

The two major reasons to avoid using dates in URLs is

Firstly, the dates make URLs longer

For example – take a URL with date and focused with keywords

URL –  foxblogging.com/10/05/2019/complete-blogging-checklist/

See the above URL it increases the length of the URL, and also it looks quite confusing to read.

When you remove the date from it,

The URL looks like – foxblogging.com/complete-blogging-checklist/

Avoiding the dates reduces 11 characters in the URL.

However, we already stated that short URLs perform better in the search engines.

Secondly, using the dates makes your content harder to update.

For example – If you are reviewing a photo editing software in 2019 and published the article under the URL

 “ foxblogging.com/10/05/2019/best-photo-editing-software/ “

And you have updated your page in 2020 and changed it to the best photo editing software in 2020.

 But when you look at the URL, it contains 2019 in it. 

Then, when you updated it also, it looks like older content.

You can use page redirects to the new URLs, but it needs to done every time you update your post.

That’s why we insist you to not to use dates in the URLs.

Also read – 14 best free web hosting providers

Create sub-folders

Use folders to separate your categories in the URL. A well-organized folders make it easy for the user to read your URL.

create subfolders, not to use subdomain. subfolders has advantage in search engines

Using descriptive names, helps google and users understand the URL and pages topic.

For example – you have seen the articles in the URL name like these, which is divided by slashes. These slashes create sub-folders.

mydomain.com/seo/ friendly-URLs

Specifically, from this URL, /SEO shows that this blog topic comes under the SEO.

Anything added after /SEO, allows them to know that they are in the specific page under the SEO.

Making more sub-folders will confuse your users and search engines. More sub-folders don’t make your search engines easier to find your topic, instead it will confuse it.

Don’t use sub-domains, instead use only the sub-folders. The sub-domains will treated as a separate website.

Sub-domain is also a type of domain, that is part of a larger domain. The root domain can have many sub-domains.

But sub-folders will be treated as a single domain

The URLs with sub-folders will look like

for example take root domain as

the root domain

then the url of subdomain looks like

sub-domain are domain seperated from root domains

Then the sub-domain is blog.mydomain.com. It is a sub-domain of the root domain mydomain.com.

Readability of the URLs

As we said already, make your URLs easy to read. 

Good URLs are easy to understand by humans and search engines.

Always try to make the perfect structure in making URLs. 

For example – compare the two below URLs with the same content

  1. http://mydomain.com/softwares/good-photo-editing
  2. http://mydomain.com/softwares/kn334ndf3v44fgcc747hbdg5746

From these two URLs, which one you would like to click for finding good photo editing software.

Here both the URLs contain the same content, but most of them click the first URL.

It is because of their easy readability. 

Without a good URL, your good content also goes unnoticed.

By even without clicking, the URLs say that it contains, good photo editing software.

The second URL looks like a malware site. When people see this URL link they think that this will infect their desktops.

No one had a clue what is inside the link for the second URL. Many of them don’t want to waste their time by clicking the unwanted link, other than they are searching.

So, try to make your URL more easily readable by users and search engines.

Don’t use titles as URLs

Similarly, we said in previous headings, using of complete post title in URL will increase your URL length.

It also causes problem during updating your articles.

For example, the post title is  how to learn to edit from photoshop

For this, the URL is like – http;//mydomain.com/how-to-learn-to-edit-from-photoshop

But later you want to change the post title to a guide to learn photoshop editing.

Instead of this use – http;//mydomain.com/learn-photoshop-editing.

This shorter URL keeps you on a safer side for upgrading in the future.

Use static URLs

Normally the URLs classified into two types

  1. Dynamic URL
  2. Static URL

The dynamic URLs normally filled with many parameters and it changes. Dynamic URLs created by CMS or server and it is usually long, and can’t easy to remember.

But the static URL is consistent

In URLs, consistency is more important for ranking higher in search engines.

Finally, the static URLs opt for you.

for example :

The static URL will be like http://mydomain.com/learn-photoshop-editing

The dynamic URLs will be somewhere like http://mydomain.com/photoshop/jvgcjd787yf7dfbdsjf78hb?f=sdbb76editing

cons of using dynamic URLs

  1. They are usually longer
  2. Mostly difficult to remember
  3. Lower keyword important
  4. Less click-through rate in search results, people don’t like to click confusing URLs.
  5. Can’t use the URL for branding.

Pros of using the static URLs

  1. Higher click-through rates in search engines, web pages, and social media shares.
  2. Easy to remember
  3. Search engines love shorter URLs. 
  4. Higher keyword importance
  5. Easy to copy, paste and share offline.

Image – dynamic URLs and static URLs.

Final quick checklist for creating SEO friendly URLs

blogging checklist for seo friendly content
  1. Focus keywords in the URL – use your main keywords to make it SEO friendly URLs.
  2. Use Top-Level Domain (TLD)
  3. Length of the URLs – use short and sweet URLs (primary thing in creating SEO friendly URLs)
  4. Use hyphens between the words, not underscores
  5. Use lowercase, avoid uppercase
  6. Avoid using dates (increases your post length)
  7. Use HTTPS, not HTTP (buy SSL certificate)
  8. Create sub-folders 
  9. Easy Readability 
  10. Don’t use titles as URLs, short it
  11. Use static URLs instead of dynamic URLs

Also, read – Effective blog writing tools to write a blog

Conclusion

Concluding that, by using these above things, you can create the SEO friendly URLs for your articles and blog posts.

Thank you for spending your valuable time with us. If you find this article useful, please share it.

Do you have any other technique to make SEO friendly URLs for your blog posts? comment below, so that other readers also know it.

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