URLs are a lightweight ranking signal, but a heavyweight user experience factor. A clean URL structure helps crawlers understand site hierarchy.
Best Practices for 2025
- Hyphens, not underscores: Google reads
seo-guide as "SEO Guide" but seo_guide as "SEOGuide".
- Lowercase always: Servers treat
/Page and /page differently, causing duplicate content.
- Avoid Dates:
/2024/08/guide expires quickly. Keep URLs evergreen: /guide.
Clean URLs are step one in a Technical Audit.
Audit your slugs: Find messy URLs with Zyro Optimization Hub.