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Dashes or Underscores? Which is Best for Search Engines? | ArticlesBase.com
Category: Web Design
We all know that it is necessary to optimize each page of our website in order to rank highly in search engines. And one of the many tricks that are used to rank highly for a keyword is that of using the keyword as many times as possible within a page. This includes – but is not limited to – titles, meta tags, headings, footnotes, captions, and alt tags. But one widely neglected method is the use of keywords in urls.
In this article, we discuss the naming of files and whether it is best to use dashes or underscores to represent spaces.
Pack Your URLs With Keywords
search engines place a lot of importance on keywords in filenames. So to improve your search engine placement, choose descriptive filenames that include the keyword or keywords of interest.
For example, if your page is a general page about bricks. Then you should use it in the filename for the page, such as bricks.html.
But what if you want to include multiple keywords? Or what if you have key terms or keyword phrases?
In urls, it is not possible to include spaces (, and it is not a good idea to replace spaces with the workaround). Consequently, some webmasters have resorted to using underscores or dashes to separate words in filenames. In fact, if you look around the internet, you are likely to see both in use.
But are dashes and underscores equal? And if not, which is best for search engines?
Go With The Dash!
Thats right, for search-engine-friendly urls, we recommend using dashes to separate words and key terms, as it is the most widely accepted delimiter. When a search engine sees a filename with dashes, such as /red-rubber-duckies.html, the search engine recognizes three distinct words.
On the other hand, if underscores are used instead, most search engines just see one word. And if we have gone through the effort to use keywords in our filenames, we might as well make them count!
Of course, smart search engines such as Google and Yahoo are able to recognize keywords either way, however, for maximum compatibility, use the dash. Remember, Google and Yahoo arent the only search engines out there!
About the Author:
Sofia Sapojnikova Vesta Digital http://www.vestadigital.com
