What Google recommends
| Practice | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Readable words, not ID numbers | People can tell what the page is before they click |
| Hyphens between words | Google recommends hyphens over underscores |
| One letter case | Google treats upper and lower case URLs as different pages |
| Few parameters | Extra parameters create near-duplicate URLs that waste crawling |
| A simple, logical structure | Visitors and Google see how pages relate |
Good and bad URLs
Good example. /services/personal-injury/car-accidents/ shows the page topic and where it sits on the site.
Bad example. /page?id=4827&ref=home&session=99 says nothing, and every new parameter can create another copy of the same page.
Keep slugs short and skip dates unless the page is about a dated event. Do not repeat the keyword in every folder. It does nothing for rankings and looks spammy.
Stable URLs protect rankings
Changing a URL resets how links and bookmarks reach the page. When you must change one, add a 301 redirect from the old URL and update your internal links. Our guide to 301 and 302 redirects covers site moves step by step.
Watch for duplicate versions
Sometimes one page loads at several URLs, such as with and without a trailing slash or with tracking parameters. Then Google has to pick one. Pick it for Google with redirects and canonical tags, and link to one version everywhere.
Planning a new site structure? Our web design team sets clean, permanent URLs from day one, so you never need to change them.