Should I rename URLs to use hyphens instead of underscores?
-
Hello.
We are about to launch a redesigned and significantly expanded site that has traditionally used underscores as separators between words in its URLs.
Would you recommend replacing all the underscores with hyphens? That would then require many 301 redirects to maintain any links that might be out there.
Thank you!
-
Thank you, Nitin.
-
Thank you very much, Peter!
-
I'd tend to agree with Nakul on proceeding with caution - while Google doesn't necessarily treat "_" as a word separator, the URL is just one relatively small ranking factor. There are many risks in a site-wide 301-redirect, especially when you're redesigning. If the redesign runs into SEO trouble, you're not going to be able to separate the many changes, and that could delay fixing any problems.
The exception would be if you're planning to change a lot of the URLs anyway, as part of the redesign. Then, I'd go ahead and do it all at once. Hyphens are a nice-to-have - I'm just not sure that, practically, the risks outweigh the rewards. It does depend a lot on how you're currently ranking and whether the URLs are causing you any major headaches.
-
You should use a hyphen for your SEO URLs. Google treats a hyphen as a word separator, but does ****nottreat an underscore that way. Google treats underscore as a word joiner — so seo_moz is the same as seomoz to Google. In fact using dashes over underscores will have a (minor) ranking benefit.
Also Note that 301 redirects passes 90%-99% value to redirected link so earlier you do it the better.
Hope it makes sense.
-
Thanks, Nakul!
-
If you are just doing a redesign that does not entail any URL changes, I would suggest keep them as is.
On a side note, how are you ranking compared to your competition ?
You could potentially test 1-2 pages on your site, change _ to - and see if it makes any difference. And yes, you would need to do 301 redirects and that would pass most (not all) of your link juice. It can and still work fine. So before you do something like this on a large scale, test it on a small scale if you can.
It also depends on how much authority your site has in Google ? Do your breadcrumbs show up in Google SERPS ? And so on.
I hope this helps you come to the right conclusion.
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
-
Good to use disallow or noindex for these?
Hello everyone, I am reaching out to seek your expert advice on a few technical SEO aspects related to my website. I highly value your expertise in this field and would greatly appreciate your insights.
Technical SEO | | williamhuynh
Below are the specific areas I would like to discuss: a. Double and Triple filter pages: I have identified certain URLs on my website that have a canonical tag pointing to the main /quick-ship page. These URLs are as follows: https://www.interiorsecrets.com.au/collections/lounge-chairs/quick-ship+black
https://www.interiorsecrets.com.au/collections/lounge-chairs/quick-ship+black+fabric Considering the need to optimize my crawl budget, I would like to seek your advice on whether it would be advisable to disallow or noindex these pages. My understanding is that by disallowing or noindexing these URLs, search engines can avoid wasting resources on crawling and indexing duplicate or filtered content. I would greatly appreciate your guidance on this matter. b. Page URLs with parameters: I have noticed that some of my page URLs include parameters such as ?variant and ?limit. Although these URLs already have canonical tags in place, I would like to understand whether it is still recommended to disallow or noindex them to further conserve crawl budget. My understanding is that by doing so, search engines can prevent the unnecessary expenditure of resources on indexing redundant variations of the same content. I would be grateful for your expert opinion on this matter. Additionally, I would be delighted if you could provide any suggestions regarding internal linking strategies tailored to my website's structure and content. Any insights or recommendations you can offer would be highly valuable to me. Thank you in advance for your time and expertise in addressing these concerns. I genuinely appreciate your assistance. If you require any further information or clarification, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you. Cheers!0 -
301 Redirect Attribute-Based Dynamic URL to Renamed Attributes
I work with a number of ecommerce sites that have dynamically-created urls based off of product attributes we've assigned in our cms. I am updating a handful of these attributes to more seo-friendly terms because they are outdated but am not certain how to go about redirecting all the urls that each attribute is in/could be in. For example: If I had the attributes hoagie and beanie and changed them to sandwich and headwear, a dynamic url might change like this: .com/hoagie/french-bread ---> .com/sandwich/french-bread .com/beanie/hoagie/novelty ----> .com/headwear/sandwich/novelty Since the urls are dynamically created, I am not sure how I go about redirecting all of them, or if I need to redirect all of them at all (instead just redirecting the urls indexed by Google, etc.) I also have a number of links within copy on each of the sites that contain linked anchor text using attributes that will be changing. I am assuming I will need to 301 each of these or update them manually to reflect the new attributes. I am new to the seo field and would appreciate any and all advice or direction to guides and tutorials that could aid me with this project. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OfficeFurn0 -
Using RewriteRule - SEO Implications
Hi There, My client has a website (www.activeadventures.com) which they relaunched in April 2013. The company sells inbound tourism trips to New Zealand, South America and the Himalayas. Previously, the websites for these destinations were on their own domains (activenewzealand.com, activehimalayas.com, activesouthamerica.com). With the launch of the new website those domains were all retired (but had 301 redirects put into place to the new site), and moved into sub directories of the activeadventures.com domain (eg: activeadventures.com/new-zealand). There has been no indication that this strategy has improved organic search results (based on analytics) and in my opinion I believe that having this structure has been detrimental to their results. My opinion is based off the following: Visitors to the websites are coming into the site with a specific destination in mind that they want to travel to. Thus... having the destination in the URL I believe provides more immediate relevancy and should result in a higher CTR. I also feel that having the sites on their own URL's will provide a more concentrated theme for the destination based search phrases. The new site is a custom Joomla build and I want to find the easiest way to keep the current Joomla set up AND move the country specific sections of the site back onto their original URL's. It seems on the face of it that the easiest way to get this done is to use the htaccess file and use "RewriteRule" to push all the relevant pages back onto their original domains. Obviously we will ensure we also cover off pointing the existing 301's from the new site and the old sites to this new structure. My question is, are their any potential negative SEO implications of using the RewriteRule in the htaccess file to achieve this? Many thanks in advance. Kind Regards
Technical SEO | | activenz
Conrad Cranfield0 -
URL redirecting domains
Hi Is there anything wrong/dangerous forwarding a clutch of domains to a sub page (landing page) on a different domain ? Say Brand X buys Brand Z and wants to close down Brand Z site but have Brand Z domain fwd to a landing page (explaining the company acquisition) on Brand X site. In addition Brand Z had a few related but unused domains forwarding to Brand Z doman & now also wants those fwd'd to the new landing page on brand X Since the reasons for doing this forwarding are legitimate company reasons relating to an acquisition i would have thought it should be ok but can anyone think of a reason why could be bad since i remember in the old days peeps used to redirect domains for seo reasons so worried fwd'ing a load of domains could cause some sort of negative flag with big G ? Also do domain redirects transfer the authority/juice from the old site/domain to the new destination page (new landing page on brand x site) similar to how a 301 redirect works ? Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
When should we use Remove URLs feature on Google Webmasters Tool?
Hi there, I run an ecommerce website on Magento. We are no longer using a category. It actually does not appear on the menu: mydomain.com/category.html If this is the case, do you recommend to remove it through the Removal URL feature on GWT? I don't want this to affect the juice of other links of the site such as: mydomain.com/product.html Thanks very much. Regards
Technical SEO | | footd0 -
URL structure
Hi, I am in the process of having a site created which will focus on the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PS3 Vita. I would appreciate some advice when it comes to the URL structure. Each category mentioned above will have the following subsections News
Technical SEO | | WalesDragon
Reviews
Screenshots
Trailers Would the best url structure be? www.domain.com/xbox-360/news/news-story-headline
www.domain.com/ps3/reviews/ps3-game-name Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.0 -
Keyword and URL
I have a client who has a popular name (like 'Joe Smith'). His blog URL has only his first name and the name of his company in it, like joe.company.com. His blog doesn't rank well at all in the first 3-4 Google SERPs. I was thinking of advising him to change the URL of his blog to joesmith.company.com, and having his webmaster do 301 redirects from the old URL to the new one. Do you think this is a good strategy, or would you recommend something else? I realize ranking isn't just about the URL, it's about links, etc. But I think making his URL more specific to his name could help. Any advice greatly appreciated! Jim
Technical SEO | | JamesAMartin0 -
Strange duplicate url
From your csv report I have this strange issue. This url: elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/ it's a duplicate of this elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/ but the only url that I can see in the website is this one. Why the "-" is transalted some times in "%2D" referrer obviously is elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/solo-disponibili/ I have many duplicate url...Can you help me? Thanks
Technical SEO | | yeppon0