Web Page URLs

Every page we create for the web needs a name.  If you’re using a CMS or Blogging software such as WordPress, the task of creating urls might be done automatically for you.  There really isn’t a standard for urls - or at least not one that I’ve come across - so you need to create your own naming conventions for the site that you build.

The way I’ve named pages has changed since I first started developing sites.  With search engine ranking becoming more and more important to our clients, I now name pages with search optimization in mind.  With this medical associates site , I choose to match the names of the sub-pages to the navigation.   For example, the General Surgeons page is named general-surgeons.php, the Office Policy page is called office-policy.php, and so on.

Now, it can be very easy to get carried away with the number of words that you use in an url and that may have an impact on a site’s SERP (search engine results page).  Try to keep the length to 3 to 5 words and you’ll probably be fine.

Word length is just one of the things to keep in mind when you create your naming convention.  Follow these other best practices if SEO is important to your client (and it probably is) to help boost their rankings with the likes of Google.