Site, Page, and File Naming Conventions
What are naming conventions?
Naming conventions refer to the way we name our web site subdomains, individual pages, documents and images. Ex- https://financial-aid.providence.edu is the name for the Financial Aid Site subdomain. It is VERY important, both for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and for the user experience that we use consistent and clear names for both our web sites/pages and also for the various files linked to them.
…Consider this- which is more clear to you?
https://ia.providence.edu?
or
https://institutional-advancement.providence.edu?
The second option, while longer, indicates more clearly to the user what the link leads to- no one outside of the immediate PC community probably knows the acronym in the first link. Clearly naming a site for what it is will give you more traffic, more relevant traffic (meaning the people who find your site actually mean to be there), and higher search engine results.
At Providence College, we abide by the following rules regarding the naming of web sites, pages, and files associated with those pages/sites.
- Sites must be clearly named- no acronyms ex- https://institutional-advancement.providence.edu not http://ia.providence.edu
- Separate words using the dash, do not use underscore or leave spaces – ex https://www.providence.edu/financial-aid not https://www.providence.edu/financialaid or https://www.providence.edu/financial aid. It’s especially important not to leave spaces in the names of linked files- some web browsers will choke on files containing spaces in their names and may not allow your audience to actually view the files.
- Only use alphanumeric characters in your names- A through Z and 0 through 9. With the exception of the dash “-” to separate words, do not use any special characters such as $%&@* etc. If you need to use “and”, spell it out. Do not use the ampersand &.
- Remove connecting words – Connecting words such as “a”, “and”, “the” etc., don’t help with search engine optimization and only make your urls more complicated, easier for users to mess up and harder to use. Ex- do this- https://www.providence.edu/amazing-document-images.pdf instead of https://www.providence.edu/my-amazing-document-and-images.pdf
- When naming files within your site that you are linking to, use common, easy to understand terminology that allows you to remember what the file actually is and also allows you to easily re-upload a new version of the file and overwrite the old one. Avoid using dates or version numbers in the name- the system will actually date and append version numbers (where appropriate). Example, say you have an Adobe .pdf registration form that you use for Freshman registration and is updated yearly on your site. A good name to use might be freshman-registration-form.pdf rather than a complicated name such at regform04122011.pdf. There is no way for you, or perhaps another web editor who may be working with you, to know what a file named regform0412011.pdf actually contains. Also, if you use the clear name of freshman-registration-form.pdf, you can (in some cases) overwrite the file directly with a new version that has the same name- and all your links on your site will still be intact! If you were to use another name, you’d have to go in, delete the old version, and then scour your site to make sure all of your old links point to the new version of the file.
