URLs are decided in the first week of a project and live for years. Getting them wrong is not fatal, but fixing them later means redirects, lost authority and a nervous month. Here is how to get them right first time.
Use short, lowercase, hyphenated URLs that describe the page in words a person would recognise. Keep the structure shallow, avoid dates and numbers that will age, and never change a URL that is ranking unless you have a good reason and a redirect ready.
The rules that matter
- Lowercase only. Mixed case creates duplicate URLs on some servers.
- Hyphens between words, not underscores.
- Words a human recognises, not IDs.
- Short. If you can remove a word without losing meaning, remove it.
- Shallow. Two levels is plenty for most sites.
- No dates unless the content is genuinely time-bound, since a 2024 in the URL makes a good page look stale forever.
| Poor | Better |
|---|---|
| /page?id=482 | /services/web-design |
| /Services/Web_Design_Services_UK | /services/web-design |
| /blog/2024/03/12/post-title | /blog/post-title |
| /p/1/2/3/final-final-v2 | /guides/website-costs |
Folders and hierarchy
Group related pages under a folder when the grouping is real and useful: /services/, /locations/, /blog/. Do not build folders to mirror your org chart.
Every extra level puts the page further from the homepage, which tends to mean less crawl attention and less internal authority. Flat is usually better than clever.
Should keywords be in the URL
A word or two, naturally. The URL is a weak ranking signal and a moderately strong usability signal: people read them in search results and when deciding whether to click a link someone pasted.
Stuffing does nothing. /best-cheap-affordable-web-design-company-services reads as spam to humans, which is reason enough to avoid it.
Changing URLs later
Only with a reason and a plan. Every change costs some authority in transfer and risks breaking inbound links you do not control.
- Use 301 redirects, not 302.
- Never chain redirects through more than one hop.
- Update internal links to point at the new URL rather than relying on the redirect.
- Keep redirects in place indefinitely. Removing them a year later breaks old links that still send traffic.
- Expect a few weeks of fluctuation before things settle.
Frequently asked questions
Do URLs affect SEO?
Slightly. Descriptive URLs are a weak ranking signal and a stronger usability signal, since people read them in results and links. Structure matters more than keywords: shallow, stable, readable URLs help far more than stuffing terms in.
Should I use hyphens or underscores?
Hyphens. Search engines treat hyphens as word separators and underscores as joiners, so my_page reads as one token while my-page reads as two words. Hyphens are also the widespread convention.
Should the date be in a blog URL?
Usually not. Dates make evergreen content look stale and make updating awkward, since the URL implies an age the content no longer has. Only use dates for genuinely time-bound content such as news.
Is it bad to change URLs?
It carries risk. With correct 301 redirects most authority transfers, but there is usually short-term fluctuation and any inbound link you do not control now depends on your redirect surviving. Change only with a real reason.
How long should a URL be?
As short as it can be while still describing the page. Under about 60 characters is a reasonable target, mostly because longer URLs get truncated in search results and are awkward to share.