Hyphens in keywords
-
Anyone know if hyphens affect the SEO value of keywords?
So is:
Sandwich-making course
Worse than:
Sandwich making course
I'm talking about in titles and body text.
I already know that too many hyphens is a bad idea in URLs and domain names.
-
Thanks for your reply!
-
Thanks for responding!
-
We use hyphens and non-hyphen keywords for seo. We have used it for quite some time and we have seen no negative effects.
-
Hyphens are generally used by search engines as word separators so IMO they don't hurt and they don't help.
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
-
Keyword Phrase in URL structure
Wondered the best URL structure, to include a major keyword phrase. Our clients' case is that their domain name is not the main keyword. So should we include the keyword phrase in the URL structure to list all their office locations: A - www.website.com/anxiety-treatment/denver/1001
Technical SEO | | ErnieB
or
B - www.website.com/denver/1001 Would this be considered keyword stuffing? We'd like "A" above to rank for keyword phrases related to "anxiety treatment denver", etc.0 -
Hi! I'm wondering whether for keyword SEO - a url should be www.salshoes.com/shoes/mens/day-wear (so with a few parent categories) or www.salshoes.com/shoes-mens-day-wear is ok for on page optimization?
Hi! I'm wondering whether for keyword SEO - a url should be www.salshoes.com/shoes/mens/day-wear (so with a few parent categories) or www.salshoes.com/shoes-mens-day-wear is ok for on page optimization? Hi! I'm wondering whether for keyword SEO - a url should be www.salshoes.com/shoes/mens/day-wear (so with a few parent categories) or www.salshoes.com/shoes-mens-day-wear is ok for on page optimization?
Technical SEO | | SalSantaCruz0 -
How to rank 1 page for multiple keywords in the new way
Hi There It has been a little while since I was involved with KW's in earnest. 1.5 years ago and beyond I did really well with SEO. I'm not in a hugely competitive market but we found our keywords, we wrote great web pages for 1,2,3 keywords and when we found more great keywords that we built a new page to rank for. For example: One big hitting keyword was "Rugged PDA", we created a category page for Rugged PDA's. Another was "Rugged Handheld" so we had a new page for that. We then long tailed "semi rugged PDA", "waterproof rugged PDA" etc etc and built sub category pages. We were legit, did lots of content marketing, ran a blog tweeted etc and we did really well to be honest. However these days it's not working, One of Rand's whiteboard sessions stated that you need to build bigger topic based pages that delivered on more keywords (The one about shoes!). This is great as we love that idea as we can have 1 big category page that offers great value to the visitor, however I am struggling to work out how we target a bigger list of keywords to the one page or to fewer pages. To underline this the MOZ page rankers also still seem to work in the same way where they expect 1 or 2 KW's per page to get A ranks to them, so I'm confused!! For example Rugged PDA is an old term, Google trends is showing that it's glory days are over and we know that the term "Rugged Smartphone" is the one to use as we all use smartphones not PDAs these days. However we also see a lot about Rugged + Phone, Mobile, Cell, Handheld, tablet, device, phablet... all relevant to one big category page. So I run these KW's through google search to see if the same pages come up as a test to see if Google thinks they all mean the same, I get a few, but not much overlap. How do we therefore have 1 page that talks about all kinds of great stuff about the "Rugged smartphone" but one that also targets rugged handheld, rugged android device etc etc? I've spent 2 days catching up, i'm none the wiser on this specific element but i'm sure I am just missing one key element of common sense here and any help is very much appreciated. Regards Dave
Technical SEO | | Raptor-crew0 -
Duplicate listings in Google UK for the same keyword phrase
If I search on Google UK for the keyword phrase personalised mugs, my website mug-shop.co.uk appears twice on the 2nd page one after the other. One result is for the home page and the other is for the category personalised mugs Weirdly enough another site i have celtmyth.co.uk does the same thing for the keyword phrase personalised candles but only intermittently. Should I be concerned & if so how do i resolve it? Cheers mug-shop-duplicate-ranking.jpg
Technical SEO | | Brinley0 -
How to rank for several keywords
Hi there Mozers, So far I have been building my webshop ouibonjour.com over the course of several weeks while studying the awesome educational content here on Moz and other SEO-related sites. I think I have done an OK job so far, and I have managed to rank #1 on several long tail keywords after a couple of weeks. Problem is - there are more long tail keywords I want to rank #1 for as well! **What I have done so far: ** I have taken the strongest keywords that can generate conversion and added them in page titles, title heads, main anvigation titles, in my alt text in images and so forth. The page is not screaming "SEO!" and I am happy with that. Nevertheless, I think the SEO measures here are done in an effective way. If you bothered to click on my page, you can see that the home page has only 5 posts (posts, not pages). They redirect visitors to other important parts of my site, and I change the image and/or the title once every 3 weeks to not keep the page too static. In a /magazine subfolder, I have a blog that ranks pretty good for several keywords, but the content here is not directly related to my products, but rather articles that fits the interests of my potential buyers (lifestyle, culture, etc). **What I need - but not sure how - to do: ** I basically want to rank for way more long tail keywords that relate to my products, but I don't want to continue setting up posts that have these keywords, because the content on the main page will be too heavy on the SEO, and therefore lose value for my visitors. How can I rank for more keywords without having to pepper my site with posts full of these keywords? I do not want to write articles on my blog that focuses on different combinations of long tail keywords neither, because it will get too spammy and make my visitors not return. I need help! I hope I have managed to explain my problem clearly. If there are any Whiteboard Fridays or posts on this subject that I have missed, please link me directly. If not, I would be tremendously happy and appreciative for any tips and tricks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Fernando_0 -
Google doesn't rank the best page of our content for keywords. How to fix that?
Hello, We have a strange issue, which I think is due to legacy. Generally, we are a job board for students in France: http://jobetudiant.net (jobetudiant == studentjob in french) We rank quite well (2nd or 3rd) on "Job etudiant <city>", with the right page (the one that lists all job offers in that city). So this is great.</city> Now, for some reason, Google systematically puts another of our pages in front of that: the page that lists the jobs offers in the 'region' of that city. For example, check this page. the first link is a competitor, the 3rd is the "right" link (the job offers in annecy), but the 2nd link is the list of jobs in Haute Savoie (which is the 'departement'- equiv. to county) in which Annecy is... that's annoying. Is there a way to indicate Google that the 3rd page makes more sense for this search? Thanks
Technical SEO | | jgenesto0 -
Tags - what keywords should i add ?
Hello 🙂 When I am adding tags to my post, what keywords should i use for tags and how many tags i should add per post ? Should i use keywords from title of post , focus keyword or something related to post ? my blog is http://www.dota2club.com/ Thank you !!!!
Technical SEO | | wolfinjo0 -
Keywords in Vanity URL
If I set up a vanity URL that just 301's to the main site, do the search engines look at the keywords in the vanity URL when determing how to rank the site. For example, if I set up a vanity URL of www.coolnewtechgear.com, and redirect it to www.company.com/products/, would the search engines view the keywords of cool, new, tech, and gear and associate that with the page it's getting redirected to? Or does it ignore the vanity URL and only look at the content of the page itself?
Technical SEO | | ryanwats0