mountain range 2

URL Parameters handling for SEO

What issue is this page dealing with?

URL parameters can be an overlooked aspect of SEO, causing issues with URL bloating and impacting crawler bandwidth. Learn how to identify and fix URL parameter issues through SEO audits and handle them effectively using robots.txt rules.

Expert Insights on Managing URL Parameters for SEO Shane Parkins on Controlling URL Parameters for Better Rankings

Shane Parkins has spent over 14 years in search, working across agencies, in-house teams, and as a freelancer before founding Climb & Conquer. His expertise covers technical SEO, paid search strategy, and resolving complex site structure issues that impact rankings.

This guide breaks down how URL parameters affect crawling, indexing, and site performance. Mismanagement leads to duplicate content, wasted crawl budget, and ranking fluctuations. Shane shares best practices to handle parameters effectively while keeping search engines and users on the right path.

Image shows Shane Parkins in a co-working space in Newcastle upon Tyne.

When it comes to URL parameters, in my experience it often requires an experienced SEO to carry out effective diagnostics. Parameters by nature often imply advanced function of the site, this could be session ids, filtering or triage. As URL parameters can often go unchecked by the average business owner I often find a lot of opportunities with a robust audit, especially if the CMS is not a mainstream platform or if you have set up WordPress without SEO features (see our WordPress SEO services).

URL parameters can also cause secondary issues, which can be quite serious, but URL bloating – impacts crawler bandwidth. There are some sites I’ve worked on that have over 500,000 URLs with parameters, that have had no remedial work on them, causing untold damage to their organic rankings and visibility. Some platforms will have URL parameter handling built-in, for example in WordPress changing the URL handling to permalink rather than the hostname can help with the URL structure.

Climb & Conquer Site

How do I identify URL parameter issues?

There are a few options here but given the nature of these issues, it really can pay to commission an SEO expert to carry out an audit. The first place I’d recommend looking at is carrying out an SEO crawl, using software such as Screaming Frog, SEMrush or SiteBulb. The tool should highlight excessive URLs if parameters are rife on the site, for example, if you have a small site but the crawler has picked up, say 10k+ URLs, all with parameters. You can often filter or export the URLs – identify ones with ? or & in there.

The second method is to look into the Google Search Console > Coverage area, here you can see if Google is having a hard time processing a lot of URLs, you may see a lot of parameter URLs in Crawled or Discovered – Not Indexed. You can also do something similar with Bing Webmaster Tools. A final step could be to go into Settings > Crawl data within Search Console, this will highlight how many URLs are being crawled per day, if there are spikes completely out of the normal then it could be due to parameter handling.

Climb & Conquer Leadership Team

How do you fix URL parameter issues for SEO?

The hardest part of fixing URL parameter issues is often diagnosing what the parameter is actually doing. If it’s something like a session ID or perhaps looking to triage someone if they are logged in, it can be difficult to unravel the functionality. For example, if you have a triage URL for login-in users available on every page, it can cause a substantially high error occurrence rate on the URL crawler. The fixes around these types of errors can vary from site to site, if functionality fixes are not available then perhaps look at handling some bespoke rules into robots.txt file.

Google’s Performance Max Updates for 2025 - Climb & Conquer

How do you prevent URL parameter errors?

The first port of call is to assess if the page holds relatively unique and valuable content, for example on an eCommerce brokerage page you may have a product range and a brand filter, which appends ?brands=2 onto the URL. It may be a beneficial fix to incorporate /site/brandname/ rather than a parameter, which can hold better SEO value with it being a word rather than an ID. So always focus on URLs that have value to be served as static URLs rather than parameter or dynamically changing content.

Climb and Conquer Management Team

Additional notes on URL parameters and their impact on SEO

  • Nofollow on Parameters

    I typically avoid using nofollow on parameters, and the HTML tag, instead I try and fix these through the robots.txt file, this can ensure there is a fallback site-wide, whereas it’s much easier to forget adding an HTML tag.

  • Deal with bad Functionality

    Take the necessary steps to unravel bad functionality, always. Excessive URL parameters can be symptomatic of a badly structured and coded website.

  • Don't lose UX Advantages

    Parameters can have great value to user experience, filtering for example (if the filtered option is not holding search volume), try and find the balance of SEO and UX.

Proud to wear these badges

Northern Digital Awards Winner
Prolific North Independent Agencies to watch award
Climb & Conquer has secured Living Wage Accreditation - November 2024
Carma Partnership
mountain range 2

  • Poorly managed URL parameters can cause duplicate content and indexing problems. Let us optimise them for better search performance.

  • Search engines waste crawl budget on unnecessary URLs. We help streamline your site’s structure to ensure important pages get indexed properly.

  • From URL parameter handling to full technical SEO audits, we provide tailored solutions to improve rankings and site efficiency. Get in touch today.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Some case studies

We support over 50 brands, from small businesses to multi-million pound companies, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Our approach is simple but rare: our staff stay on accounts and work with fewer clients, allowing them to truly understand each business and drive growth. With expert training and support, this leads to outstanding results. We’re only as good as our next round of results, so speak to us today to see what we can do for your business.

View Results
Make My House Green Logo

MakeMyHouseGreen

MakeMyHouseGreen is a part of London-based Switchd, operating in the energy switching market. MakeMyHouseGreen, is a relatively new venture for the business and operating within a fast-growing but quite competitive industry, solar panels. The website is built on WebFlow which allows rapid deployment but can have SEO specific challenges. Due to the team’s experience on […]

Read Case Study
Mallet Footwear London

Mallet London

Mallet London is a British brand that has been transforming the footwear industry with its innovative designs and dedication to craftsmanship since 2015. Inspired by unattainable market prices and driven by evolving trends, the brand was founded on the principles of creating luxury footwear at accessible price points. The brand’s evolution mirrors its humble North […]

Read Case Study