Mastering Friendly URL Structures: Best Practices and Guidelines

A logical progression from website organization is defining a naming convention for URL paths. URL paths should follow a consistent naming convention throughout all of your websites. Only under exceptional circumstances should a URL path name deviate from an established naming convention for a website.

Best practices for URL path naming conventions recommend consistency in how sections, sub-sections, pages, and sub-pages are written. For most websites, we recommend URL paths follow the general naming convention below. 

     DOMAIN / SECTION / SUB-SECTION / PAGE / SUB-PAGE

This basic structure gives users an idea of where they are in the site’s hierarchy of pages. This can be especially important considering the volume of traffic that enters the site from web searches that will bypass the homepage and take visitors directly into deeper pages in the site. It’s also a good practice for improving the SEO value of your site’s pages, as it provides more specific context for the content of the page.

Section

Under this convention, SECTION is the top-level “directory,” and generally refers to the category under which subsequent content resides. For example, in the URL path http://domain.com/about, “About” is a primary category that often appears in a main menu, and thus receives a top-level URL path.

We generally like SECTION names to be one continuous string of letters without hyphens or underscores (e.g. about, services, people, etc.) because that makes for shorter top-level URL paths, however two word hyphens may also be acceptable if they aren’t too long. Given that top-level SECTION names are usually the label-names of your main navigation, it’s additionally wise to keep them clear, simple and concise.

Acronyms and abbreviations should be avoided because they often don’t make sense to visitors unfamiliar with the abbreviations. That being said, some abbreviations, such as http://domain.com/faq, may work so long as they make logical sense to most visitors.

If your website has multiple users who are able to write URL path names, we recommend defining in the governance plan some limitation for who may write top-level directory names. These are typically the most highly sought-after URLs in a Website, and you will want to have a well-defined process for how those are distributed and assigned. A free-for-all is probably not a good process.

Sub-Section

SUB-SECTION is the second-level directory, if one exists. Using About as an example, “Meet Our Team” is the second-level “directory” in the URL path:

     http://domain.com/about/team

since “Meet Our Team” is just one of the sub-sections under “About” in this example.

SUB-SECTION names also may be one continuous string of letters without hyphens or underscores or a string of words separated by hyphens.

The choice between the two really depends on whether the additional words add value to the user’s understanding of location, and/or if the string of words adds SEO value because it captures important descriptive words for the content of the page.

In the example above, the words “meet our” really don’t add much information, and the shorter URL path name is simpler. Simplicity may become more important as you add pages to sub-sections and the URL path names become very long.

Some URL path names may appear to deviate from this rule if a sub-section does not actually exist, in which case the sub-section location would be occupied by the page name.

You should determine the system that works best for your needs and stick to it. Just keep it simple, logical, and as memorable as possible so that it is easy for all users to implement.

Multiple-Word Names

When writing URL paths with multiple-word names, we recommend using hyphens rather than underscores or concatenation. 

Use of underscores makes it far too easy for a user to misread an underscore as a space, especially when the URL path is hyperlinked. Most hyperlinks are underlined to indicate to users that a section of text is a hyperlink.

Concatenation is more obviously problematic because it simply creates confusing URL paths.

Aliases and Redirects

How URL path aliases and redirected URL paths are handled will depend on the policies of your organization and the platform you use for your website. We highly recommend you define the rules and processes surrounding URL aliases and redirects in your governance plan, and here are some questions to consider along those lines.

• How are URL aliases and redirects managed in your web environment?
• Who manages URL aliases and redirects?
• Is there a process or procedure for requesting an alias or a redirect?
• May anyone request a URL alias or redirect?
• Are redirects to websites outside of your domain or server environment permitted?
• Who determines whether a URL alias or redirected URL path is appropriate or not?
• Are there any special rules for using top-level directories as URL path aliases or redirected URL paths?