How to Create SEO-Friendly URLs: A Strategic Guide for High-Impact Growth

Why URL Structure Still Matters in 2025

Most SEO checklists start with keywords, back-links, or content depth. But before any of that matters, there's one quiet element that decides whether Google, Bing, or ChatGPT will even recognise your page as relevant: your URL structure.

For CMOs, technical SEOs, and growth leads in fast-scaling SaaS and e-commerce companies, the URL is more than a slug. It’s a signal. A signal to search engines about the page’s content. A signal to AI models about how to classify it. And a signal to users about whether the link is worth clicking.

In today’s landscape of zero-click searches and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), you’re not just optimising for Google. You’re building your presence for AI-powered summaries, voice results, and predictive experiences.

That makes your URL structure a core piece of growth infrastructure not just a technical hygiene task.

This guide will show you exactly how to build SEO-friendly URLs that drive rankings, improve user experience, and help your content appear in Google SGE, Bing Chat, and Perplexity citations all while staying scalable and user-first.

What Are SEO-Friendly URLs?

An SEO-friendly URL is one that communicates clarity and relevance at a glance. It's short, readable, and instantly tells both search engines and users what the page is about. A strong URL balances both semantic intent and technical cleanliness, which makes it easier to index, cite, and trust.

Here are the core traits of an SEO-friendly URL:

• It’s short and focused on a single topic.

• It uses natural, human-readable words with no gibberish or ID strings.

• It aligns with user search intent and includes a well-placed target keyword.

• It avoids uppercase letters, special characters, and dynamic query parameters.

• It reflects a logical structure that fits within your broader content hierarchy.

Let’s compare two real-world examples:

Good:
https://saasbrand.com/blog/how-to-create-seo-friendly-urls

This URL clearly communicates what the content is about, uses hyphens for readability, and targets a relevant keyword phrase.

Bad:
https://saasbrand.com/blog?id=456&cat=seo-tips-2025
This version is vague, messy, and disconnected from any user intent. Even if the page content is great, the URL adds friction and that matters.

Search engines favour clarity because it reflects structure. AI models favour clarity because it enables contextual parsing. In both cases, a poor URL format is a lost opportunity.

The Core Components of a High-Impact URL Structure

Let’s now break down what separates high-performing URLs from the rest. This isn’t just about formatting, it's about intent, clarity, and architecture.

1. Clarity First

Avoid cryptic strings or irrelevant slugs. If your URL contains numbers, underscores, or random codes, you're forcing the search engine to guess. A simple test? Read it out loud. If it doesn’t sound like a natural phrase, revise it.

2. Strategic Keyword Placement

Don’t stuff your URLs with keywords. One well-placed primary keyword is enough and it should reflect the user’s query. For example, if someone’s searching “how to optimize URLs for SEO,” a slug like /seo-friendly-urls aligns well and reinforces intent.

3. Hyphens Over Underscores

This may seem minor, but search engines treat hyphens as word separators, while underscores merge words. Use /seo-tips instead of /seo_tips. It improves both indexing and user readability.

4. Lowercase Everything

URLs are case-sensitive. A capital letter in the middle of a slug can lead to duplicate paths or 404s on some servers. Always default to lowercase it’s safer, cleaner, and universally understood.

5. Ditch the Dynamic Parameters

Query strings like ?id=8762&session=abc may work behind the scenes, but they’re disastrous for SEO. If your CMS forces you to use dynamic URLs, work with your dev team to rewrite or mask them using routing logic and canonical tags.

Anatomy of a High-Performance URL: The Components That Matter

The most effective URLs are deceptively simple. They don’t try to pack in every keyword variation or track every query string. Instead, they prioritise intent, clarity, and crawlability. A good URL reads naturally and sets expectations. It rarely includes unnecessary words like “and” or “the,” and it always avoids clutter like session IDs or capitalised characters.

Keywords still play a central role, but stuffing them into the slug isn’t the answer. Placing the primary keyword close to the root, using hyphens instead of underscores, and sticking to lowercase formatting all contribute to better readability for both humans and machines. Static URLs are always preferred over dynamic ones, not just for crawl efficiency, but because AI tools are more likely to surface static links in snippets or summaries.

The structure also needs to reflect hierarchy. 

For example, a blog post about URL structure should ideally follow a path like /blog/seo/url-structure-guide rather than /seo/url?post=34927. 

It’s easier to understand, easier to index, and more likely to be interpreted correctly by AI when generating context-aware answers.

How to Optimise Your Website's URL Structure for SEO + GEO

Strong URLs aren’t just helpful, they're essential. If your goal is to rank in Google and surface in generative AI responses, then your URL structure must do more than function it must perform.

Modern SEO isn’t just about helping users find your pages. With the rise of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), you're also writing for the machines that summarise, reference, and showcase your content in tools like Google SGE, Perplexity, and Bing Chat. Clean, structured URLs make it easier for these systems to extract value from your pages and cite your brand.

Here’s how to build URLs that move the needle.

Match User Intent

Structure URLs by how your users think:

• Informational: /how-to-set-up-ssl

• Transactional: /pricing/enterprise

• Navigational: /blog/seo-guides

This isn’t just helpful for users, it signals topical clarity to AI crawlers and Google’s semantic engines. The URL path becomes part of your relevance architecture.

Outcome: When your URL matches search intent, your click-through rates improve, bounce rates drop, and your content is more likely to appear in AI summaries.

Create Logical Folder Hierarchies

Organise content into neat, topic-aligned silos:

bash

CopyEdit

/blog/seo/seo-url-structure

/use-cases/retail/customer-loyalty

/product/analytics/insights-platform

This format tells both crawlers and AI systems what the page is about and how it fits into the bigger picture of your site.

Pro Tip: Clean hierarchies build topical authority, which is now a ranking signal across both traditional SEO and GEO frameworks.

Canonical Consistency

Every page should have:

• One canonical version

• A short, clean URL

• Clear parent-child structure

Related read: How to Optimise for E-E-A-T in 2025

Common SEO URL Mistakes Even Tech Brands Make

Pro Tip: Always implement 301 redirects + canonical tags when you clean up or migrate URLs.

The GEO Angle: Why Generative Engines Need Clean URLs

We’re now entering a search environment where large language models, not just Google, are acting as primary navigators for information. These AI models don’t “click” in the traditional sense. They parse. They reference. They cite. If your URL structure lacks semantic clarity, your brand may never appear in the answers generated by ChatGPT, Gemini, or Bing.That means if your URL isn’t semantically clear, you won’t show up in:

• Google SGE overviews

• Bing AI chats

• Perplexity summaries

• ChatGPT citations

GEO demands URLs that are:

• Topically aligned with the content

• Crawlable

• Structurally meaningful

At Passionfruit, we’ve built our SEO and GEO playbooks around this exact shift optimising not just for rankings, but for citability within AI search experiences. Our internal URL frameworks are structured to support both traditional indexing and AI comprehension, which is why Passionfruit clients consistently surface in high-visibility summaries across Google SGE, Perplexity, and Bing Chat.

Reference:what is GEO, what is SEO   

URL Rewrite Framework: A Step-by-Step Optimisation Plan

1. Audit Current URL Landscape

The most effective way to fix your URLs is to treat them like a product launch. Begin with a crawl audit. Using tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Ahrefs to find:

• Orphaned pages

• Redirect chains

• Long or duplicate URLs

2. Categorise Pages by Type

From there, group your URLs into categories:

• Blog/Resources

• Product/Feature

• Use-case/Industry

• Support/Docs

• Legal/System

 For each group, create formatting rules that keep slugs consistent and intuitive. This not only aids indexation but helps internal teams stick to best practices as new content is added.

3. Rewrite Priority URLs

Next, prioritise your highest-impact pages typically those with strong rankings or significant traffic and rewrite the URLs first.

Start with URLs that are:

• High-traffic

• AI-snippet eligible

• Misaligned with intent

Over time, expand the strategy across your site while layering in schema markup and breadcrumb navigation.

Use slugs like:

bash

CopyEdit

/how-to-create-seo-friendly-urls

/seo/best-practices-url-structure

4. Add Schema Markup

Use FAQ, HowTo, Breadcrumb, and Article schema to enhance visibility and assist AI parsing.

5. Lock It in with Redirects + Canonicals

Never delete or move a URL without redirecting it and setting a canonical path. Legacy links matter for authority.

6. Track & Refine

Measure crawl stats, traffic, and snippet appearances monthly. Adjust based on results.

Need help rewriting your URLs for clarity, structure, and AI readiness? Passionfruit specializes in scalable technical SEO solutions for SaaS, e-commerce, and AI-first brands. 

Talk to a growth strategist: Book a consultation

Performance Check: How to Measure the Impact of SEO-Friendly URLs

Once your new URL structure is live, you’ll want to track results. Start with crawlability Google Search Console will tell you whether pages are being discovered and indexed correctly. Look at impressions, time to index, and crawl rate.

From there, measure user metrics in GA4: bounce rate, time on page, and entry path changes. Are users landing where they’re supposed to? Are they dropping off?

Finally, test your content in generative engines. Search for your target queries on Google SGE, Bing Chat, and Perplexity. Are your pages appearing in summaries or citations? If not, your structure might still be holding you back.

Why SaaS, E-Commerce, and Tech Brands Must Prioritise URL Optimisation

For fast-scaling digital teams, small inefficiencies compound quickly. A poorly structured URL might not seem like a growth blocker in isolation, but it plays a critical role in several areas that matter deeply to CMOs and growth marketers: crawl efficiency, canonical trust, internal linking health, and generative search visibility.

E-commerce brands often suffer from bloated, dynamically generated URLs with tracking parameters, which confuse crawlers and dilute page equity. SaaS companies with vast documentation libraries or feature updates risk content fragmentation without a scalable taxonomy. Tech-led companies pushing thought leadership can struggle to appear in AI summaries simply because their URLs don’t signal enough contextual clarity.

At scale, every bad URL is a missed opportunity not just for Google rankings, but for AI comprehension. That’s where the intersection of SEO and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) becomes increasingly important. A strong URL strategy is no longer a backend clean-up task; it's part of your revenue infrastructure.

Also read: SEO vs. GEO vs. AEO : The Ultimate Guide to Ranking on Everything in 2025

Final Thoughts

A well-structured URL does more than improve your SEO; it builds clarity, trust, and long-term discoverability across both search engines and generative platforms. As AI models increasingly shape what users see, the structure and meaning behind your links become central to how your brand is interpreted, indexed, and cited.

When your URLs are clean, semantic, and strategic, they reduce friction for crawlers, simplify internal link architecture, and make your content easier to surface in AI-generated answers and featured snippets. This isn’t just good SEO, it's smart, future-ready marketing.

For teams navigating content at scale whether managing a large knowledge base, a high-velocity blog, or a dynamic e-commerce store URLs are no longer backend cleanup. They’re part of your audience experience, your generative strategy, and ultimately, your growth velocity.

If you want to be found, referenced, and trusted, build your URL strategy like it matters. Because in 2025, it really does.

6 Key Takeaways

1. Clean, short, readable URLs drive both human and AI engagement.

2. Every URL should serve a purpose and signal its content clearly.

3. GEO demands structure, clarity, and semantic richness in your URLs.

4. Folder hierarchy and slug precision impact how your site is understood.

5. Don’t change URLs without a proper 301 and canonical setup.

6. URL optimization is a growth asset and bake it into your content ops.

FAQs

1. What are web-friendly URLs, and why are they important?
Web-friendly URLs are short, human-readable links that clearly describe a page's content. They improve trust, click-through rates, and help both search engines and generative AI systems understand and cite your content correctly.

2. How do I optimize my website’s URL structure for SEO?
Create logical folder hierarchies, avoid dynamic parameters, include relevant keywords, and standardise slug formats. Always redirect old URLs and maintain canonical consistency to avoid fragmentation and confusion.

3. How do URL structures affect GEO and AI snippet rankings?
GEO relies on structured, semantically clear URLs to determine what a page is about. Clean URLs improve your chances of being featured in AI overviews, especially for question-based searches and summary results.

4. Should I use dates in my URLs?
Avoid adding dates unless they’re vital for context (like event pages or yearly benchmarks). Date-less URLs stay evergreen and perform better in AI snippets that value timeless, reliable content.

5. What’s the best URL length for SEO?
Keep it under 60 characters. Shorter URLs are easier to index, more clickable, and perform better in AI-generated answers. Always choose clarity over keyword stuffing.

6. How can I audit and fix broken or poor-performing URLs?
Use tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or Sitebulb to detect crawl errors, broken links, or duplicate slugs. Prioritise fixing high-traffic or revenue pages, and build a redirect map to preserve existing SEO value