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SEO Issues: Poorly Formatted URLs

Mike Kamo
  • Updated

If you’re using Ubersuggest’s Site Audit tool, you may come across the issue: "Poorly Formatted URLs for SEO".

This alert helps you identify and fix URL structure issues that could be hurting your site’s visibility in search engines.

This guide will walk you through how to recognize and resolve poorly formatted URLs especially if you’re just getting started with SEO.

What Are Poorly Formatted URLs

A poorly formatted URL is a web address that doesn’t follow best practices for SEO. These URLs might contain elements that reduce their effectiveness in search rankings.

Here’s what you should aim for when optimizing your URLs:

  • Keep them short: Ideally, under 120 characters.
  • Make them relevant: The words in the URL should directly reflect the page content.
  • Avoid symbols and underscores: Stick to hyphens instead.
  • Remove session IDs: These can create unnecessary complexity.
  • Limit sub-folders: A flatter URL structure is easier for both users and search engines.

Why URL Format Matters

Well-formatted URLs improve both SEO and user experience. Google uses URLs as a ranking signal, and clean URLs offer several advantages:

  • Easier for search engines to crawl and index
  • Clearer for users to understand and remember
  • More likely to be shared and clicked on
  • Build trust and improve click-through rates
  • Reduce confusion and improve engagement

Poorly structured URLs, on the other hand, can look cluttered, confuse search engines, and discourage clicks.

What Ubersuggest Checks in Your URLs

When poorly formatted URLs are recognized during the site crawl, Ubersuggest will list the issue in the report and divide it into 3 different columns: character check, dynamic check, and keyword check.

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Characters Check

Ubersuggest looks for unwanted symbols or characters. 

Ideally, URLs should only use:

  • Uppercase/lowercase Latin characters
  • Numbers
  • Dashes (-)

Special characters or symbols (like %, &, or @) may be flagged.

Dynamic Check

The tool scans for dynamic parameters like ?, =, or &, commonly seen in URLs like:

https://example.com/page.php?id=123 

These can make URLs harder to read or index. Ubersuggest helps you identify and simplify them.

Keyword Relevance Check

This test checks if the keywords in the URL match those in the page’s title tag. It used to compare the meta keywords tag, but since Google no longer uses that for rankings, the focus is now on the title tag, which still matters for SEO.

For better results, include relevant keywords in the URL and make sure they also appear in the title tag.

How to Fix Poorly Formatted URLs

Fixing Symbols and Characters

  • Replace special characters with dashes.
  • Stick to letters, numbers, and hyphens.

Fixing Dynamic URLs

  • Turn complex, parameter-heavy URLs into clean, static ones.
  • Use descriptive words (e.g., /best-coffee-shops instead of /shop?id=12).
  • Consider implementing URL rewriting on your server or CMS.

Fixing Keyword Relevance

  • Make sure your URL accurately reflects the page’s topic.
  • Align your URL structure with your title tag to maintain consistency and improve search relevance.

Want to dig deeper? Check out this guide by Neil Patel on creating SEO-friendly URLs.