Highly readable Urls tell search engines what a product page is about while providing your eCommerce website‘s visitors with helpful information at a glance. Readability can be subjective, so let’s take a look at a few examples of some well-known eCommerce brands’ product pages. I just replaced the domain name with “example”.

Example #1:
http://www.example1.com/shop/product?ID=1736064&CategoryID=2910&LinkType=prodrec_pdpza&choiceId=@H6@Customers%2

You don’t want your product page URLs to look like this one. First of all, it looks awful with the unreadable chunks such as “%7CRR-CMIO%7”. Secondly, it contains no relevant keywords. URLs like this are normally created by the eCommerce platforms you use to build your store. They automatically generate what we called “dynamic URLs” which carry parameters. Sounds convenient, right? But the convenience comes at a price of uninterpretable, awful-looking URLs. As a website visitor, you have no clue of what the product page is about by looking at this kind of URLs. The parameters are also likely to create duplicates which may cause penalty by Google Panda.

When keywords are embedded in URLs, they also show up in the search results in a bold font like this:

As you can see, it locates prominently in the search results and significantly influences searchers when deciding which result to click. Keep in mind that it is pointless to stuff keywords into URLs since search engines have advanced their algorithms to detect this little trick.

Example #2:
http://www.example2.com/ca/en/Accessories/Women%27s/Earrings/c/3111/Whitla/p/4919

This URL use plain English and clear structure to tell both visitors and search engines what the page is trying to sell. However, the problems are that, firstly, the product name “Whitla” sounds rather vague to both search engines and to your visitors. Moreover, the surrounding symbols and numbers are confusing and interruptive. Remember the more readable it is, the more effective it becomes.

Example #3:
https://www.exmaple3.com/en/new-arrivals/accessories/wallets/double-wallet.html

We often see this type of product page URL structure that reflects the eCommerce website structure:

website.com/category-sub-category/product-name/

Many eCommerce merchants often think that the URL structure should match the site structure. However, just because your URL has multiple levels doesn’t mean that the search engine spiders will treat the page as being multiple levels deep.

Additionally, the “new arrivals” (category), “accessories” (sub-category) and
“wallets”(sub-category) push the most important keyword “double wallet” all the way to the back. According to Matt Cutts, Google’s former head of the web spam team, it is perfect to have 3, 4 or 5 words in your URL. Google algorithms weight the 6th, 7th…words less and doesn’t give them as much credit.

What it actually does is making the URL unnecessarily longer. Technically speaking, URLs can be over 2000 characters in length. However, search engines do read shorter URLs better. After analyzing 2 million Google search results, Backlinko found a clear correlation between URL length and Google rankings.

Last but not the least, overly structured URL can result in duplicate content. For instance, the following URLs can link to the same product page, which results in a split of ranking signals that can harm your search traffic.

Example #4:
https://www.example4.com/en/new-arrivals/accessories/wallets/double-wallet.html

Example #5:
https://www.example5.com/en/gifts/gifts-for-her/accessories/wallets/double-wallet.html

You can use the canonical tag or 301 redirects to prevent this issue, however, the easiest way is to avoid the overly structured URLs from the beginning.

So, what is the ideal eCommerce product page URL?

Short and clear. Like this:

Example #6:
https://www.example6.com/en/multi-ovals-shaped-earrings.html

The core keywords should come right after the domain name. It reads like regular and plain English; understandable by human and compelling to those who are looking to buy oval-shaped earrings.

How to optimize URLs for SEO?
In reality, optimizing URLs can be risky, especially when it comes to site-wide URL change. Search engines need time to process the change, during which your overall rankings may drop and some of your pages may lose ranking completely if errors are made. How to implement a sitewide URL change is beyond the scope of this blog post. Make sure that it is well planned, executed and measured.