As commonly acknowledged, URL structure is crucial to SEO. URL is the door where spiders enter your site, so the quality of URLs determines if spiders can have a good understanding of your site. Today I would like to share with you the top 9 tips on URL improvement.

1. No deep nesting
Limit the subdirectory level under 4. Users and spiders don’t like deep nesting of subdirectories like “…/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/1.html”. This can cause a waste of link juice and is also hard for users to remember the URL.

2. Insert keyword in the URL
As I said above, URL is the door where spiders enter your site. Keywords in URL is like a number plate that informs spiders of what is the house. Notice: do not insert too many. Adding 2-4 keywords sounds wise.

3. Remove the session ID within URL
Session ID with in URL can confuse spiders and make them suspect you have duplicate content.

4. Reduce variables in URL
Variables within URL can trap spiders and make the crawl the same URL again and again. It is a waste of time and resources to search engines as well as your own websites.

5. Use dash to separate Keywords
Do not use “_” but “-” to separate keywords within URL.

6. Use lowercase URLs
URLs are case-sensitive so you should be converted to lowercase.

7. Keyword in filename is better than keyword in directory name
Emphasize the keyword by putting it as the file name rather than directory name.

8. URL canonicalization
Specify the canonical URL to each unique page.

9. 301 redirect
After tweaking the URL, always remember using the 301 redirect to point the old URL to the new one.

After applying the 9 tips into practices, the URL structure of your website will be definitely more search engine friendly and your ranking will be improved.