URL-Guidelines

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title: [URL Standards]
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# URL Standards

URLs are a highly visible attribute of your content that impacts user experience, accessibility, and search rankings.  The URL of a page specifies the page's name and location within VA.gov. 

## About URLs
- URLs consists of a domain, sub-directories (optional), and a page name.  
- A good URL helps users AND search engines by providing: 
  - A high-level description of what the content is about
  - The location of the content within your site 
  - How the site's creators rate the relative importance of the content, as indicated by its depth in the directory structure.
    - (Higher placement = Greater importance)
  - Information on how the content is related to other content within your site.

Good URLs also help people who build and edit the website to:
  - Locate the correct files to work on
  - Understand where they fit in the website hierarchy, and 
  - Reduce misundersandings about file names and locations 
      - *"the 'Five savory soups' article is in 'articles/recipes/five-savory-soups.htm'"* **vs.** "the 'Five savory soups' article is in 'static/misc/cooksrecp19.htm'"

![The structure of a URL, illustrating domain, subdirectory and page name]({{site.baseurl}}/images/url-segments.jpg)

## What makes a good URL?

A good URL should be "[short, descriptive and efficient](https://www.deepcrawl.com/blog/best-practice/guide-to-url-design/)"

Short
 : Fewer words and shorter directory paths. Avoid creating deeper directory 
Descriptive
 : File name reads like page title with hyphens instead of spaces between words. 
 : When a long page title needs to be shortened, you can omit words but try and keep it recognizably similar to original. 
Efficient
 :