Approved Word Separators in URLs
-
Hi There,
We are in the process of revamping our URL structure and my devs tell me they have a technical problem using a hyphen as a word separator. There's a whole lot of competing recommendations out there and at this point I'm just confused.
Does anyone have any idea what character would be next-best to the hyphen for separating words in a URL? Any reason to prefer one over another?
Some links I've found discussing the topic:
- This page says that "__Google has confirmed that the point (.), the comma (,) and the hyphen (-) are valid word separators in URL’s.": http://www.internetofficer.com/seo/google-word-separator/
- This page suggests the plus (+) symbol would be best: http://labs.phurix.net/posts/word-separators-in-urls
- This guy says he's tested and there's a whole bunch of symbols that will work as word separators: http://www.webproguide.com/articles/Symbols-as-word-separators-a-look-inside-the-search-engine-logic/
I'm leaning towards the tilde (~) or the plus (+) sign. Usage would be like so: http://www.domain.com/shop/sterling~silver OR /shop/sterling+silver etc...
Thanks in advance for your help!
-
Hey Jonaz, use the plus (+) sign. I think it's your best bet.
-
Hi All,
Anyone got a definitive answer on this one? I wish I could use dashes but can't. Any more advice on this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
-
Hi jonaz, I think I was editing my post when you were replying. Dashes are best, yes. I'd say underscores would be second-best. If your developers can't work with dashes, then my suggestion would be to use underscores.
Using a plus sign (+) isn't bad. The plus sign represents a space character I believe.
-
Hey George,
Problem is that I can't use hyphens (-) and need an alternative... Unless you mean dashes like mdash and ndash? (i.e. – and —) Wasn't sure if those characters were okay for URLs and whether they are recognized as separators by google...
-
Hello jonaz,
Here's the short answer: dashes are best.
Next best might be underscores.
For the long answer, check this post out: http://www.seomoz.org/q/hyphens-v...
Hope this helps!
-
The joys.... good luck!
-
Thanks, Davinia. Didn't want to introduce too much complexity to the problem but the issue is that our devs already have a series of rules in place where the hyphen carries special meaning, so I'm gonna have to work under those constraints...
-
I haven't come across this issue before so can't comment on which alternative but I'd be looking for Google's best practice and select one from there (from Google dev website or perhaps Matt Cutts has covered this in a video).
It seems interesting that your dev team could use an alternative like ~ or + but not (-) a hyphen. Maybe push back for the use of a hyphen!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
International URL Structures
Hi everyone! I've read a bunch of articles on the topic, but I can't seem to be able to figure out a solution that works for the specific case. We are creating a site for a service agency, this agency has offices around the world - the site has a global version (in English/French & Spanish) and some country specific versions. Here is where it gets tricky: in some countries, each office has a different version of the site and since we have Canada for example we have a French and an English version of the site. For cost and maintenance reason, we want to have a single domain : www.example.com We want to be able to indicate via Search Console that each subdomain is attached to a different country, but how should we go about it. I've seen some examples with subfolders like this: Global FR : www.example.com/fr-GL Canada FR: www.example.com/fr-ca France: www.example.com/fr-fr Does this work? It seems to make more sense to use : **Subdirectories with gTLDs, **but I'm not sure how that would work to indicate the difference between my French Global version vs. France site. Global FR : www.example.com/fr France : www.example.com/fr/fr Am I going about this the right way, I feel the more I dig into the issue, the less it seems there is a good solution available to indicate to Google which version of my site is geo-targeted to each country. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | sarahcoutu150 -
301 redirecting a previously abused URL
A client previously had their most important landing page at domain.com/example.htm They carried out the sort of link building that was commonplace a few years back (exact match anchors, paid blog links etc) targeting this URL, but they also got a bunch of legitimate decent quality links here. I believe they may have had a number of issues when link quality algo updates were rolled out, so rather than try and get links removed and go through the disavow process they instead decided to abandon this URL, let it 404 and start afresh at domain.com/example.html - updating all internal navigation, XML sitemaps etc. So fast forward to today. What is the best practice for this URL these days do we think? Is it now possible to 301 domain.com/example.htm > domain.com/example.html and recover whatever value may be left here? The argument for not doing so may be that you could pass over the negative metrics associated with the old URL, but would this not be handled by the real-time penguin update and the poor links just devalued rather than actually harming? And could this just be tested - i.e. add in the 301, monitor the impact and if things don't go the way we'd want then just remove the 301 again? Would be keen to get a few opinions on this. TIA
Technical SEO | | Salience_Search_Marketing0 -
Why are pages linked with URL parameters showing up as separate pages with duplicate content?
Only one page exists . . . Yet I link to the page with different URL parameters for tracking purposes and for some reason it is showing up as a separate page with duplicate content . . . Help? rpcIZ.png
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
How to handle temporary campaign URLs
Hi, We have just run a yearly returning commercial campaign for which we have created optimized URL's. (e.g. www.domain.tld/campaign including the category and brand names after the campaign www.domain.tld./campaign/womens This has resulted in 4500+ URL's being indexed in Google including the campaign name, now the campaign is over and these URL's do not exist anymore. How should we handle those URL's? 1.) 301 them to the correct category without the campaign name 2.) Create a static page www.domain.tld/campaign to which we 301 all URL's that have the campaign name in them Do you have any other suggestions on what the best approach would be? This is a yearly commercial campaign so in a year time we will have the same URL's again. Thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | eCommerceSEO0 -
Overly-Dynamic Urls how to fix in SEOMOZ?
Hello. I have about 300 warnings of overly-dynamic urls. In urls like this: http://www.theprinterdepo.com/clearance?dir=asc&order=price&p=10 As you can see all parameters are needed, and my ecommerce solution generates them automatically. How can I get rid of these warnings? I suppose that by using robots.txt, but I have no idea about it. In my google webmaster tools I have already configured that these parameteres the crawler should not index them. Check the image here: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/64/37092444.png/
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Domain name with separated/non-separated keywords
I start a new webshop within a month about spices and coffee. I'm thinking about the domain name to take. I would like to get visitors from coffee and spice keyword searches. How much does it matter (in terms of SEO) if I use spiceandcoffee instead of spice-and-coffee? (The site will be hungarian and it sounds easy to remember without the hypen: fuszer-es-kave or fuszereskave.) Does Google weighing more separated keywords in domain, instead of non-separated?
Technical SEO | | joo0 -
Someone is redirecting their url to mine
Hello, I have just discovered that a company in Poland www.realpilot.pl is directing their domain to ours www.transair.co.uk. We have not authorised this, neither do we want this. I have contacted the company and the webmaster to get it removed. If you search for the domain name www.realpilot.pl we (www.transair.co.uk) come up top. My biggest worry is that we will get penalised by Google for this re-direct as it appears to be done using some kind of frame. Does anyone know anything about this kind of thing? Many Thanks Rob Martin
Technical SEO | | brightonseorob0 -
Changing url structure
We are an ecommerce site established in 2005 and currently have some great rankings. We are about to move away from our existing platform, actinic and move on to Magento. This will change all our url's. What are the steps we should be asking our web developers to follow in order to minimize the consequences of moving? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | LadyApollo0