Separating words in URLS using hyphens vs. "no separator"
-
Does it matter if I use hyphens in URL versus. "no separation".
Ex
www.mysite.com/someproducts or
www.mysite.com/SomeProductsvs.
www.mysite.com/some-productsThe last is perhaps more readable by humans, but does it make any SEO difference using one or the other?
-
Love those examples, brightened up a Tuesday morninig.
-
This makes me wonder whether one can ever get extra mileage out of word merging, for SEO or branding purposes. keyphraSEOlogy.com sticks out in my mind...
-
Suggested title tag:therapist: You need it if you can't read it.
-
lets not forget - therapist.com
-
I know many people disagree with me on this one, but I would go big and get it fixed once and for all. The problem is only going to be worse when you get more content on the website.
Good luck with the work!
-
Agree - this is the issue. Especially the "space" separators definately needs fixing, so the question here is related to deciding the new strategy on this.
- thanks for taking the time to check it out :-).
-
Awesome. Love seeing real world examples.
-
Well. It's a lot of work and entails some risk to redirect many files. That being said, I have redirected thousands of URLs over the last couple of years and have yet to see it fail.
While it is a lot of work to change many URLs, I really appreciate consistency on a website, and prefer all URLs to follow the same structure. So I would probably redirect all the URLs.
I suppose you are working with the Bruel & Kjær website - and I can see there are several types of URLs now - no hyphens and with space as a separator. Adding yet another type of URLs will be at least somewhat confusing.
-
Exactly - Don't touch it. Start with new pages and you'll be fine. Even Google admits that 301 may not always pass all the goodness across.
-
If you already have a big structure running on a "no-separation" setup don't change it. The upside will not outweigh the potential disruption you cause. Do it for your new pages only.
-
My real reason for asking the question is, that I have a rather large site using the "no separation" method, and I wonder if it is worth the effort to change it.
So - I think hypenation is better for readability, but it will be quite a job to do it propertly, so I'm not sure if changing to hypenation it is worth it or not (with 301'ing etc).
I'm leaning towards using it for new pages (except this make the site look somewhat inconsistent).
-
The difference in interpretation by search engines will not be huge, but it's still worth sticking to the more readable hyphenated version. Also you don't risk the search engines misreading some urls due to new unwanted words forming from other words in a "no separation" scenario.
-
Hi there
There won't be any first order SEO difference. But there are some second order benefits to the hyphened URLs. As they are more readable by humans, they tend to be clicked more often in SERPs and gain more natural links.
Best,
Thomas
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
-
When to re-write and redirect a blog url?
What are best practices for rewriting (and then redirecting) blog URLs? I refresh old blog posts on our blog every month and many of them have URLs that are too long or could be improved. However, many of them also already get decent organic traffic and I don't want to lose traffic due to a URL redirect. Are there any best practices or "rules" I can follow when deciding whether to re-write and redirect blog URLs?
Content Development | | Emily.R.Monrovia
Thanks!0 -
Renaming web pages vs new web site
I am struggling with renaming a lot of my web pages because I used short form acronyms vs long form keyword page names and now my pages aren't ranking where they should be and used to be. I am weighing a whole new web site or just a massive update with new page names. I also have an old domain that 301's to the new url but the old one outranks the new one. If you search google for cheap tubes the first domain you see is www.cheaptubesinc.com (the 301'd version) when the real url is www.cheaptubes.com. I know I am getting a duplicate content penalty and when moz crawls my site they see 2X the page that I really have. I tried fixing this with canonical tags but it only helped 5 pages according the moz crawls since doing them. Since last July 4th my business has been declining and I know there was an SEO algorithm update last July 4th. I think either method of renaming the web pages with better SEO for instance cheaptubes.com/single-wall-carbon-nanotubes.htm vs cheaptubes.com/swnts.htm as it is currently. In either case, it is still an HTML 2 website done on frontpage and the question I keep asking myself is if I should just scrap the whole site and start over with a more modern format. Should I try to get a new site together with good SEO and publish it quickly vs rename and 301 a bunch of pages? What about the old site? Do I need to track the old page names and 301 them to the new ones? Any help is appreciates Mike
Content Development | | cheaptubes0 -
Ecommerce Traffic increase - moving from 500 to 1000 words/category
Hello, We have found traffic to increase upon adding content to category descriptions. Our category pages are stronger than our product pages. Our main categories (the fourty that are in the navigation) have 500 words on them, carefully written helpful content. We are trying to decide whether to increase (for these 40 categories) to 1000 words per category. Do you think this would increase traffic ? Is it a good idea? Thanks!
Content Development | | BobGW1 -
Global Blogs vs Regionalised blogs
Im in the process of launching a blog. The blog will be for global audience. If I wanted to target a more specific region in the future example UK would it be advisable to launch a separate blog for the UK market or how could I regionalise the posts if I kept blogging on the Global blog.
Content Development | | Clickatell20 -
Sub Domain vs New Domain
I have an existing blog separate from my main e-commerce site. (mainsite.com). Is there any advantage at all in moving the blog to a sub domain like blog.mainsite? I know putting it in a sub_folder_ is best. I don't want to do that because of security concerns. Handcrafter
Content Development | | stephenfishman0 -
Can you use creative commons non-commercial images on a company blog?
Does anyone know if it is okay to use creative commons images on your company blog if they are under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license. Technically you are using it on a commercial site, but you are not directly making money from the image or selling it.
Content Development | | ProjectLabs0 -
Sub directory vs sub domain for company blog
My company's blog is currently a sub directory - www.site/blog.com but for technical ease we are considering changing it to a sub domain - www.blog.site.com. What are the SEO ramifications of each? Thank you! Best, Sara
Content Development | | theLotter0 -
Blogs: Hosted vs. Off-Site
What is the latest opinion on whether to have a blog hosting on your primary domain or on an outside domain (either Wordpress or just another URL). In the past we have done the former and it's been a great source of fresh content and organic traffic. Wonder if there is good argument now for not having it on the domain. With this new site we're working on it logistically would be more challenging given their tech resources, plus they already have thousands of pages.
Content Development | | BMGSEO0