What are the best practices for URL structure in SEO?

Characteristics of a good URL structure for SEO includes:

• Descriptive and Clear – URL's should clearly provide information on the page content. It includes keywords relevant to the content, helping users and search engines understand what your page is about
• Concise and Simple – URL's should not contain complex characters. They should be brief and descriptive
• Separate Words with Hyphens – URL's should use hyphens to separate words, rather than underscores, as Google does not understand underscores, and it improves readability
• Do Not Use Upper Case or Special Characters – special characters and upper case should never be used in your URL structure for SEO and it confuses crawlers and users. URL's should be kept in lower case without characters to improve search engine readability and user experience 
• Add Keywords – Relevant keywords should be used in your URL to improve your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). It also helps search engines understand the page content 
• Security – use a secure protocol (HTTPS) rather than an unsecured protocol (HTTP). Google does favour secure websites, having a secure and encrypted website using HTTPS can help to improve your ranking in SERPs

Why is URL Structure an Important Part of SEO?

URL structure is an important part of SEO for numerous reasons, playing a role in how search engines and users understand and engage with your website:

Improves Crawlability

Search engines rely on crawlers, also known as bots or spiders, that crawl your website and then index the content that they find. When you have a clear and descriptive URL structure, crawlers can understand and navigate your website effectively, ensuring your pages are indexed correctly.

Improves User Experience

URL structure plays a vital role in user experience (UX), a major ranking factor. Users trust and engage with websites that have concise and descriptive URL's. This leads to longer site visits, higher engagement, and lower bounce rates, all of which are good signals to search engines

Improves Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Search results show the URL as part of the listing. When your URL is descriptive, clean and relevant, your listing becomes attractive to users, improving your CTR.

Improve Ranking in SERPs

Using your selected and relevant keywords in your URL helps search engines identify what the page is about, ranking it correctly. You see this when your URL aligns with search queries.

Improves Content Organisation and Hierarchy

Your URL should reflect how organised your website is, showing the relationship and hierarchy between your website pages. This helps search engines understand the relevance of each page, improving your ranking in SERPs.

Eliminate the Risk of Duplicate Content

With a good quality URL structure for SEO you prevent the risk of duplicate content issues, which often arises when your pages are accessible through a number of URLs. It is important to note that search engines tend to penalise websites that have duplicate content, so you want to avoid it at all costs. This can be done using the best practices for URL structure for SEO.