03 Core Concepts

Writing good URLs

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a web page’s address. URLs are easy to overlook, but they’re an important part of a well-built site. A good URL is readable, short, and reflects the structure of your website.

Before we get into what makes a good URL, let’s look at how they’re constructed.

We’ll use this page as an example: https://16by9.net/handbook/core-concepts/writing-good-urls

The protocol – https://. The “s” stands for secure. Browsers flag http:// sites as “Not secure”, so make sure your site has https.

The domain name – 16by9.net.

The path – /handbook/core-concepts/. This follows the site’s hierarchy, so you can tell you’re in the core concepts section of the handbook.

The slug – writing-good-urls. This is the last part of the URL, and the part you can edit in your CMS.

What makes a good URL

  • Make it readable. A person should be able to read the URL aloud and guess what’s on the page. /what-we-do/family-support is better than /page?id=20.
  • Keep it short. Drop words like a, the, and, and of. Shorter URLs are easier to share and remember.
  • Use lowercase. This is standard practice and avoids accidental duplicates. Some servers can treat /About and /about as two different pages.
  • Use hyphens instead of spaces. Browsers turn spaces into %20, so avoid them. Use hyphens (not underscores).
  • Avoid dates. Adding a date in a URL (e.g. /blog/2022/how-to-support-us) can make content look stale. Only use dates for content that is tied to a date, such as events or annual reports.
  • Remove extensions. Avoid using .html or .php extensions.
  • Don’t nest too deeply. /about/trustees is easier to read and share than /about/who-we-are/governance/board/trustees.

Good and bad examples

❌ Don't ✅ Do
/page?id=20 /what-we-do/family-support
/news/a-look-at-the-ways-you-can-support-us /news/ways-to-support-us
/Volunteer-With-Us /volunteer-with-us
/get_involved /get-involved
/our%20impact /our-impact
/blog/2022/how-to-support-us /blog/how-to-support-us
/safeguarding-policy.html /safeguarding-policy
/about/who-we-are/governance/board/trustees /about/trustees

URLs and your site structure

Good URLs follow the structure of your site. /about/trustees shows you’re on the trustees page, in the about section.

This structure comes from your information architecture. The hierarchy you agree on when sitemapping becomes your URL structure. When you’re creating and publishing pages, you’re deciding on the slug, and the path is inherited from the parent pages.

We often recommend keeping sitemaps as simple as possible. Avoiding deep nesting keeps your navigation simple, and your URLs short. Aim for no more than three levels.

Changing URLs

It’s a good idea to decide on a URL before publishing a page. Once a page is live, people link to it, bookmark it and share it, and search engines add it to their search results.

If you change the URL, anyone using the old link will hit a 404 (“page not found”) error. You also risk losing the search rankings the page has built up.

If you do need to change a URL, set up a 301 redirect. This tells browsers and search engines the page has moved permanently, and sends visitors to the new address. Most CMSs let you do this in their settings or with a plugin.

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