...
Always write for humans first
Describe your content. An obvious URL is a great URL. If a user can look at the Address bar (or a pasted link) and make an accurate guess about the content of the page before ever reaching it, you've done your job. These URLs get pasted, shared, emailed, written down, and yes, even recognized by the engines.
Keep it short. The shorter the URL, the easier to copy & paste, read over the phone, write on a business card, or use in a hundred other unorthodox fashions, all of which spell better usability & increased branding.
Be consistent with case, and if in doubt use only lower
URL keywords are a factor for SEO. Maintain Avoid less important words (e.g. a, the, for , our, as, etc)
Only use lower case.
Use keywords. Important ones first, not too many (3–5 keywords for file names with a maximum of 50–60 characters to avoid lengthy URLs), do not repeat words for section and sub-section.
To avoid confusion for both visitors and search engines, keywords for folders and file names should be separated with a hyphen. The plus symbol
and underscore (_) are options but not recommended.Aim to keep pages closer to the root domain as crawlers assign more relevance to pages higher in the directory structure. This means fewer folders. A URL should contain no unnecessary folders (or words or characters for that matter), for the same reason that a man's pants should contain no unnecessary pleats. The extra fabric is useless and will reduce his likelihood of impressing potential mates.
...
Example guidelines
The following examples might help VUW develop their own
...