Underscores vs. dashes in URLs | Which is Better?

underscores vs dashes seo tipsThe best thing I love about webmaster team is Matt Cutts video tutorials. He discusses SEO Tips and removes misconceptions and myths being wrongly propagated by several SEO agencies. I am proud of Google's great customer service.  We all write post titles daily and these titles are responsible for driving most of the traffic from search engines. People often don't realize that every single character in the title has its own significance. Titles that are called the king are only those which are highly optimized in terms of keyword choice, word limit and use of Special Characters that we will be discussing today.

What is an optimized title?

Any title which has these features:

  • Title containing simple daily used English words. You don't need to use complex Vocabulary and no need to consult a Thesaurus for writing titles. Just apply the rule of KISS (Keep it simple Stupid). Average internet user always go for words that sound familiar in search results page.
  • Select choice of words from Google Keyword Tool. Ignore word Tracker
  • You can use the following symbols frequently:     -  :   !  ?     
  • Use the following symbols rarely:  . &  %  # |
  • Never use the long Dash or Underscore i.e.  _     

Lets See What Google Says

Matt Cutts from webmaster help suggests that Underscores should always be avoided because Underscores are normally used by programmers while writing algorithms and is often misinterpreted by search robots. He suggested that dashes are much better to act as separators. Lets see what else he said:

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13 comments

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  1. nice one
    http://softechnogeek.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Again,You Know i would be glad if you could help me out on this,actually in my blog http://roverit.blogspot.com/,i have 0 posts option on the home page and its working fine,but the mobile template also shows 0 posts,is there any way to change the no. of posts in mobile template !
    Regards,
    Neeraj Grover

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Neeraj
    Mobile Templates formatting is dependent on your default settings. Whatever you apply in settings page will be reflected on the mobile view too.
    Why would you wish to display zero posts on homepage?

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  4. You Should Look My Blog http://roverit.blogspot.com/ Its Looks Great Without Posts On Homepage,but since there's no way out,i'll switch it old one !

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  5. Hi MMA ,am ur daily visitor also inspirational fan of you,your blog.I've been following you right from where u started,now wondering you've reached dis far with success.

    here i've a question ,
    Do search engine prefers non "-" ursl to - ned urls for indexing or rankings ?
    Eg:) www.studentscrunch.com or students-crunch, which one will be best for SEO ..

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  6. another great post Mohammad keep rocking.

    ReplyDelete
  7. that is really informative :) thnx

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  8. nice post, i don't know about this yet.. thanks man for the info.

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Neeraj

    It is looking great with posts. This is important that you should display new posts on homepage so that robots may crawl it else you will loose valuable index chances.


    @TechGeeks
    Thanks for your valuable feedback pal and I would always need readers like you. Thanks for always being there. :)
    Well they both have equal value in SEO terms. We normally prefer domains with no dashes. The reason is logical because your first time visitors can easily memorize the domain instead of a complex domain with dashes. Keep a domain with no more than two words. Simple is best.

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  10. nice post for me too:p coz i added "|" this sign in title. i will remove it soon. thanks for post.
    with best regards: Muhammad Farooq
    www.mp3videosongs123.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  11. nice post. still hard to understand things about seo but a great help for people like you who are always sharing the good deeds. thanks a lot

    ReplyDelete