URL Structure
17
Structure your URLs so they describe the content on your pages and posts.
The URL structure of your site's pages and posts should make it easy for your visitors to understand what content
they're about to see. For example, at HubSpot we structure all of our product page URLs so that the word "products"
comes first, and then the name of the product comes second (e.g. www.hubspot.com/products/social-inbox, or
www.hubspot.com/products/SEO). Just by looking at the URLs, you can get a general sense of what you'll find on
those pages.
In addition to making it easier for visitors to understand and navigate your site, structuring your URLs in this way is
beneficial for SEO. Just like the searchers themselves, search engines favor URLs that make it easy to understand
what your page content is all about.
Here's the deal: Google treats dashes (-) as separators, whereas it treats underscores (_) as connectors. So, for
example, if your page URL is www.website.com/word1_word2, Google will only return that page when people search
for "word1 word2." However, if your page URL is www.website.com/word1-word2, Google will return that page when
people search for "word1" and "word2," as well as for "word1 word2." Clearly, that latter configuration (with the dashes)
will give your page more opportunities to get discovered.
1
Uses dashes (not underscores) for page and post URLs.
2
www.website.com/word1-word2 www.website.com/word1_word2
X
✓
www.website.com/topic/subtopic
www.website.com/f1_f2_f3/ref=eh?
X
✓
