In terms of a site's SEO, is the following format best:
https://www.example.com/query/who-is-the-hippo-in-Moon-Knight
Or can a website do just as well SEO-wise if it has URLs like this?
https://www.example.com/query/62677ebabe5ab3e33e93f7c4
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For SEO you shouldn't use "query" or "search" in the URL. Google doesn't want to index other search results. Having URLs like that makes me suspicious that the pages are powered by search. See Search results in search results - Matt Cutts– Stephen Ostermiller ♦Apr 27, 2022 at 11:38
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2This question is related and might even completely answer your question: Are keywords in URLs good SEO or needlessly redundant?– Stephen Ostermiller ♦Apr 27, 2022 at 11:40
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Read more of Google - Keep a simple URL structure developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/…– nikant25Apr 29, 2022 at 6:38
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1 Answer
Yes it matters if it's human readable. It's a minor ranking factor. It probably won't make or break you, but, think of it like doing an extra credit question on a quiz. You'll get a few bonus points for it.
There are two areas it matters. The first is initial rankings. If you have human keywords in your url you will rank higher than an exact duplicate of the site with a long seemingly random url. If you've ever seen the seo table of elements urls are on there. If you google search a term on desktop if the search term is in the url, that term will be bolded. That means Google considers it to be a ranking factor for the term.
Humans respond to urls that are written to humans so it leads to an increase in CTR. More people click to them. A high CTR page will grow in rankings over time.
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I don't believe that bolding terms on the front-end necessarily means that Google uses them in their ranking algorithm. Apr 28, 2022 at 23:22
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On a google search, keywords are bolded (on the google search results page). Historically, keywords in the url were also bolded. They only bold the keyword in the meta description on SERPs now. I think John Mueler once said that keywords in urls were also a ranking factor. Apr 29, 2022 at 2:14
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1I found the Mueller quote you may be referring to. "We use the words in a URL as a very very lightweight factor. And from what I recall this is primarily something that we would take into account when we haven't had access to the content yet." So it does seem like Google does take URL keywords into account, but maybe to a small degree or on a temporary basis. Apr 29, 2022 at 2:46
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Yup in initial rankings. It does slightly improve user click rate too. If you do it across a several thousand page site it adds up. Apr 30, 2022 at 3:33