URL

A URL is a page’s address: the scheme https, the host www.example.com, the path /guides/what-is-a-url, an optional query string ?sort=new and a fragment #section.

The scheme says how to connect. The host is the domain. The path is the file or route. The query string holds parameters. The fragment jumps within the page.

Example full URL: https://www.example.com/pricing?plan=pro#faq. You can remove the query or the fragment and you have different URLs.

To a search engine every distinct URL is a distinct page. That includes http and https, www and non www, trailing slash and not, upper and lower case, and parameter order.

• http://example.com/pricing and https://example.com/pricing
• https://www.example.com/pricing and https://example.com/pricing
• https://example.com/pricing and https://example.com/pricing/
• https://example.com/Docs and https://example.com/docs
• https://example.com/list?a=1&b=2 and https://example.com/list?b=2&a=1

Pick one as the canonical and make the rest 301 redirect or canonicalise. If you do neither, you create duplicates that split signals and waste crawl budget.

Good URLs are short, lowercase, hyphenated, readable and stable. They describe the page in plain words and do not change often.

• Readable: /pricing not /p123
• Hyphenate words: /guides/getting-started not /guides/gettingstarted
• Lowercase: /docs/quick-start not /Docs/Quick-Start
• Stable: avoid dates if you can, /blog/url-design not /blog/2024-url-design
• Keep parameters out of core pages: /category/shoes not /category?type=shoes

A fixed page might be https://yourproduct.com/guides/url-structure with internal links that match it exactly, always in lowercase, no trailing slash if you chose none.

• Check the address bar for the exact URL, including case, slash and parameters.
• List URLs from your sitemap at https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml and compare to what you link in navigation.
• Use server logs or hosting analytics to see which URLs get hits, and spot parameter variants.
• Use the URL inspection tool in Search Console to test one URL and see the indexed canonical.
• Click through your site and copy internal links. Ensure they use the chosen variants and not mixed forms.

Track changes. When you ship a new /pricing path, set a redirect from any old /plans path and update all internal links. Keep a redirect map for launches and migrations.

• Force https site wide. Redirect http to https.
• Pick www or non www and redirect the other.
• Be consistent on trailing slash. Redirect the form you do not use.
• Serve all paths in lowercase. Redirect uppercase to lowercase on a case sensitive host.
• If you must use query parameters, add rel=canonical to the clean path version when the content is the same.
• Sort parameters consistently. Prefer ?page=2&sort=new to a random order.
• Do not rely on fragments for unique content. #section is not sent to the server and does not make a new page.
• Avoid renaming slugs for cosmetic reasons. Stability beats neatness once a URL is live.
• Fix 404s with redirects where a replacement exists. Remove old links that still point to deleted URLs.