Creating SEO-Friendly URLs in PHP

SEO-friendly URLs improve readability and indexing by search engines. Let’s see how to create clean and optimized URLs using PHP and .htaccess.

1. What is an SEO-Friendly URL?

A typical dynamic URL:

https://www.site.com/page.php?id=15&category=tech

Optimized SEO-friendly version:

https://www.site.com/tech/web-development

This structure improves user experience and helps search engines index pages more efficiently.

2. URL Rewriting with .htaccess

To create SEO-friendly URLs, enable Apache’s mod_rewrite and add the following rules to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^blog/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/?$ blog.php?post=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^category/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/?$ category.php?name=$1 [L,QSA]

Important: Ensure mod_rewrite is enabled in your Apache server.

3. Handling SEO-Friendly URLs in PHP

Extract URL parameters using PHP:

if (isset($_GET['post'])) {
    $postSlug = htmlspecialchars($_GET['post']);
    echo "Currently viewing blog post: " . $postSlug;
}

To generate SEO-friendly slugs for database storage:

function seoFriendlyUrl($string) {
    $string = strtolower($string);
    $string = preg_replace("/[ğüşıöç]/u", "gusioc", $string);
    $string = preg_replace("/[^a-z0-9]+/", "-", $string);
    return trim($string, "-");
}

echo seoFriendlyUrl("PHP SEO Friendly URLs");

Output: php-seo-friendly-urls

In Summary;

Use Short and Descriptive URLs → Prefer /tech/php over /tech/php-tutorial.
Include Keywords → Use relevant keywords in URLs.
Avoid Unnecessary Parameters → Avoid cluttered structures like ?id=123.
Use Lowercase Letters → /php-tutorial is preferred over /PHP-Tutorial.
Remove Spaces and Special Characters → Use - or _ instead of spaces.