Filenames should always be lowercase with hyphens separating keywords rather than spaces or other characters.
Reasons for File Naming Conventions
There are three main reasons for using these file naming conventions:
- Lowercase letters and hyphens are easier to remember and re-type if a visitor needs to type out a URL. If all filenames are lowercase, that is one less variable to worry about when typing out a URL.
- Spaces get transformed into “%20” in a URL so we always use hyphens which are much cleaner and easier to type by a visitor.
- SEO – Search engines will read keywords in filenames if separated by hyphens.
Examples
The example below uses uppercase letters, underscores and a lack of space between keywords.
our-program_Guidelines2020.pdf
The improved filename below is just a little longer but uses actual keywords for SEO improvement and is more memorable.
site-name-program-guidelines-2020.pdf