Which would be better to seperate keywords in url? underscores or dashes. By dashes I mean the minus sign like so: -
From what I read from a few articles is that google take words that are underscored as one whole word for example I have a a url with this title “seperate keywords now” and if I underscored it like so “seperate_keywords_now” google and other search engines tends to count them as one word. But if you use the dash sign like “-” you would get something like this “seperate-keywords-now” and search engines will consider each division of the words as individuals.
I cannot seem to find the link to the article as I may have read it somewhere without booking it but, when I do find it i’ll post it up.
BTW I have just bought a book on seo for php, and I will review it once i go through the book tomorrow when it arrives. and anything that I find useful out of the book I will include it in minerva seo module before a release. again thanks for being patient with me on this
dashes are gold!
I don’t think it would really matter because it’s a link. Would’nt you want the search engines to only look at text? Anyways I guess it’s more of a personal preferance- I prefer the underscore.
for proof that they do look at url keywords:
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2006-13%2CGGGL%3Aen&q=how+to+make+a+skin+for+ipb+2.2&btnG=Search
note that the keywords in the green listed urls are boldened
Eddie,
There is a fellow by the name of Scott Adams who has a quote. It goes something like this…. (paraphrasing)
“There is nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.”
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
From the Google Algorithm man himself, Dashes > Hyphens and there is a specific reason for it.
About a year ago, Matt Cutts of Google mentioned Google was “in the process” of treating underscores the same as dashes in urls. So, has this old rule finally changed?
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/whitehat-seo-tips-for-bloggers/