Should I use Dashes or Underscores as word separators to help my SEO? This is something we get asked from time to time so I thought I’d spend some time talking about the separation of words in URLs and some definite dos and don’ts.
One definite no-no in URLs is a space. Adding spaces to a page name creates something that needs to be coded when a search engine crawler looks at the site – so www.youdomain.com/my product will become ww.yourdomain.com/my%20product. This can look really bad in the SERPs and could stop people from clicking on your listing, if they take time to look.
Generally the rule is that punctuation is a good way to go as a naming convention. A hyphen (-) is generally used in words in the English Language either as a joint between two words (such as merry-go-round) or as a separator when a word is split between two lines on a page. So, a Hyphen is seen as punctuation so using this as a method of separating words in your URL (www.youdomain.com/my-product) will probably work best as a separator.
There are other methods used on the web including a plus sign (+) or merging words into one. Merging words into one to make a one word URL (myproduct) could work but there will be cases where a URL is long (for example the URL of Joe’s Post about Microsoft and Yahoo playing together nicely which is currently http://www.vertical-leap.co.uk/blog/Another-day-another-SEO-non-event-Microsoft-and-Yahoo-play-together-nicely-while-google-sulks-probably/. However, imagine this was one word, missing off the Domain and Blog folder Joe’s blog would them be named “AnotherdayanotherSEOnoneventMicrosoftandYahooplaytogethernicelywhileGooglesulks
probably.asp” (which doesn’t even fit on one line in this blog!) – for this to be split accurately to help search engine rankings is expecting a lot from an automated algorithm.
On and off over the last few years there has been talk that Google will be recognising an underscore in the same way as a dash but historically Google has always treated an underscore as part of a word and not a separator between words. Although Google’s algorithm is constantly changing, the underscore may become a viable separator between words in a URL but for the time being it’s best to use a hyphen.
