URLs

A URL is the “address” for each page on a website. Website navigation, search engines, marketing materials, and other websites all use a page’s URL to direct people to that page. Worded correctly, it helps the page appear higher in search engine results.

Purpose and Audience

Besides being the page’s address, the wording of a URL should reflect the key topic of the page. This helps the page’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization), so it will appear higher in search results. Page URLs should be planned carefully with marketing and SEO in mind. Once set, URLs should not be changed unless absolutely necessary, to avoid breaking links and harming the page’s rankings in search engine results.
 

Related Information

Creating URLs

Page URLs should:

  • Be concise and have meaning to the user
  • Employ dashes between words instead of spaces or underscores: paulcollege.unh.edu/executive-development-programs.
  • Be lowercase. Intermittent use of uppercase letters can be confusing for users and disrupt SEO

Page URLs should NOT:

  • Include years or dates unless necessary for archiving. URLs with dates by nature require changing every year, which would cause the link to break. 
  • Include acronyms unless universally recognized: unh.edu/hr or unh.edu/it.

Changing URLs

URLs should only be changed with careful consideration. Read more about changing page URLs.

Support

For support, questions, or to request a URL redirect, please contact WMD.

Training

Anyone working on a Drupal website is welcome to attend the open walk-in training and help sessions that Academic Technology offers. For a schedule of the training sessions and walk-in times, see the Academic Technology (AT) training calendar.

Responsibility for Content

UNH.edu websites are maintained by members of the University community acting as official representatives of the University of New Hampshire. Editors are responsible for creating and editing URLs as described in this standard and are responsible for complying with all relevant laws and university policies.

Violations

Although UNH AT does not monitor or regularly review site content, it reserves the right to remove at any time any content that it considers to violate this standard or any other UNH policies.

If inappropriate or inaccurate content is submitted, UNH AT will contact the site owner to discuss the issue. If the site or content owner cannot be contacted or is no longer at UNH, that content will be administered by WMD and can be removed if deemed inaccurate or inappropriate. When content is obviously unacceptable, UNH WMD will immediately remove the content prior to contacting the site owner. Unacceptable entries also may cause unh.edu access to be suspended.

Reports regarding inappropriate content may be sent to UNH WMD.