URL Structure Matters. But Not as Much as the SEO Folklore Suggests.
Everyone has opinions about URLs. Short URLs rank better. Keywords in URLs are essential. Subfolders beat subdomains.
Some of this is true. Most of it is oversimplified. Let me break it down. Google's SEO starter guide covers URL best practices, though it does not go deep enough.
What Actually Matters
Readability. `/blue-running-shoes` is better than `/product?id=7392&cat=14&ref=nav`. Users can understand the first one. So can Google.
Hyphens, not underscores. Google treats hyphens as word separators. Underscores are not word separators. `/blue-shoes` = "blue" and "shoes." `/blue_shoes` = "blue_shoes" as one token. Use hyphens.
Consistency. Pick a URL pattern and stick with it. `/blog/post-title` or `/post-title` — either is fine, just be consistent.
Static over dynamic. `/products/blue-shoes` beats `/products?color=blue&type=shoes` for readability and shareability.
What Barely Matters
Keywords in URLs. They are a very minor ranking factor. Having your keyword in the URL will not save bad content, and removing it will not tank good content.
URL length. Short URLs are slightly correlated with higher rankings, but correlation is not causation. Do not stress about URL length unless you are generating 200-character monstrosities.
Folder depth. `/a/b/c/d/page` is not penalized for depth. But excessive depth can slow down crawling and make internal linking harder.
The One Rule That Matters Most
Do not change URLs without redirects. A URL change without a 301 redirect is a new URL with zero ranking history. Every time you restructure URLs without proper redirects, you are starting from scratch. And watch out for the trailing slash issue — it creates more duplicates than you would think.
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