Case Study: Do Keywords in URLs Impact SEO & Rankings?

One of the long-standing questions asked of SEO Consultants is whether keywords in URLs actually influence rankings.

You’ll often hear that they’re a minor factor at best. But in practice, you still see SERPs where keyword-led URLs appear to have an edge – particularly when they align closely with how users search.

So rather than rely on theory, I tested it on my own site.

The Setup

When I rebranded and launched my new site, the focus for the structure and content was on consultancy-led services and skills.

The original URL structure looked like this:

/services/
/services/website-migrations/

/skills/
/skills/google-tag-manager/

At the end of November, I updated all service and skills URLs (27 pages in total) to include “consultant” or “consultancy” terms:

/services-and-consultancy/
/services-and-consultancy/website-migrations-consultant/

/skills/google-tag-manager-consultant/

What Changed (and What Didn’t)

To keep this as clean as possible:

• All updated URLs were redirected using 301s
• Internal links were updated accordingly
• Titles, headings, content, and schema were left unchanged
• No additional optimisation work was carried out

This was purely a URL structure update.

The Impact

Using Google Search Console, I compared 1st December – 31st March against the same period previously, filtering for queries containing “consult”.

The result:

• A modest increase in clicks
• A significant increase in impressions
• A clear improvement in average position

The biggest gains were seen on consultancy-related queries, where the updated URLs more closely matched search intent.

Impression Increases

Most impacted keywords in terms of impressions are:

Clicks Increases

Most impacted keywords in terms of clicks are:

What This Suggests

This isn’t a controlled experiment, and rankings are never influenced by a single factor in isolation.

However, with no other changes made to these pages, the data strongly suggests that adding relevant keywords to URLs can help reinforce topical relevance – particularly when those terms reflect how users are searching.

Final Take

So, do keywords in URLs impact rankings?

Based on this test, they appear to play a supporting role.

Not something to over-optimise or keyword-stuff, but when used naturally and aligned with intent, they can contribute to improved visibility.

In short – keep URLs clean, descriptive, and relevant.  And feel free to chuck in some keywords.