The URL http://www.example.com/green-dress.html is much more useful to us than http://www.example.com/greendress.html. When a user is told about your business or domain name by a friend, for example, the friend will have to belabor the point that the domain name includes hyphens. 6. Will using a hyphen and doing "free-games.com" damage my SEO, Rankings or anything? Using hyphens makes your brand look spammy and this makes users have a negative brand perception. As far as SEO is concerned, marketers knew that Google may penalize URLs for the use of hyphens, which is not explicitly denied, as Matt Cutts – a senior software engineer working in Google – declared in a post. Using hyphens in the URL to explicitly separate words in the folder and file names makes it VERY easy for a user to read the words in the name of your folders and pages. Negative brand perception will make it difficult for your site to get backlinks too. I have 2 words in the URL, so lets say for example the words are "Free games". Webmasters and budding SEOs get hung up on having keywords in their domain name, which is one big reason for the proliferation of domains with hyphens. Having a short domain name without hyphens also makes it easier to speak your domain name when telling others about your site. 2011. Below is an example of two alternatives: Generally won't have as … The short answer is that you should use a hyphen for your SEO URLs. A lot more thought needs to go into choosing domain names. Choose a URL that describes the page and gives people a reaso… Of all of the URLs on your site, the one URL that a user is most likely to remember is the home page URL… in other words, the domain name. It would be weird if the second-level domain was: https://www.seoptimer.com/blog/websitechecklist/. We also discuss whether they have any effect on your site’s SEO. Domains that only provide a partial match for the search phrase typically yield no more of a boost than having the same partial match to keywords in the folder or page name portion of the URL. For example, a URL containing the phrase "my_page" would be … Does having special characters negatively impact my SEO? I know! What is better, a hyphen in a url or not? Should a domain include special characters like hyphens or underscores? Yeah! Messages: 15 Likes Received: 0 Best Answers: 0 Trophy Points: 0 #1. 2. Learn more about top-level domains here. One of the stuff you should be doing is using hyphens instead of underscores. But what most don’t realize is that they will ONLY get a noticeable boost in rankings when the domain name is an EXACT match for the search phrase. We will then come to a fact-based conclusion on their use or lack thereof. Since search engines typically display your URL as part of your organic listing in the search engine results pages (SERPs), a keyword rich URL can give users strong clues about what they can expect if they click on your link. Their domain is hyphenated, just like their brand name is. In this article, we look at whether hyphens should be used in domain names, taking into consideration the different sentiments. I do so primarily for the benefit of my users. People frequently ask whether or not using hyphens in a URL is good or bad for SEO. Page 1 of 2 1 2 Next > aspotism Peon. URLs without hyphens are not always so easy to read if youcramthewordstogether. When you are making URL links on your website, there are certain things you should always do to help your website visibility on major search engines. Hi. In this case, ‘blog’ is the sub-page. While we have come to the conclusion that hyphens need to be avoided, it is important to note that this only applies to domains. Here are the SEO facts and arguments that we used to agree with or disprove the propositions brought forward: Using hyphens should be avoided at all costs. You can read it in detail here. The important thing to know is that: Hyphens are allowed in domain names themselves, as well as subdomains and subfolders. 7 Tips for Creating a Good URL Structure. I am typically a strong advocate of NOT using hyphens when selecting a web site’s domain name. The TLD is the most vital part of the domain name. With that being said, however, it's generally not good practice to use spaces in URLs (%20). Once other webmasters note that your site looks spammy, they will not link to it. Harder to advertise on radio or through word of mouth. Use Flash Or Silverlight to Insert Multimedia Elements, Not For All Content It is probably one of the most frequently discussed topics on SEO forums around the web and is often one of the first questions asked by new webmasters. This means using hyphens makes it much easier for Google to figure out what a page is about. And that is when you are marketing your domain name by word of mouth. All words are lower case. Dash in Domain Name: Is a Hyphen or Dash Good or Bad? Google views hyphens in URLs as word separators while an underscore in your url will not be recognized. www.sub-domain.domain-name.com/sub-folder-1/ is a perfectly valid URL. Google Commands for SEO? In this article, we look at whether hyphens should be used in domain names, taking into consideration the different sentiments. It is a part of your brand that will stay with you for a long time. Some common TLDs include .gov, .edu, .biz, .com, .net, .org, with .com leading the rest in popularity. What your domain should include or not include has been an ongoing discussion among brands, webmasters and marketers. Thread starter #1 djbaxter Tazmanian Veteran . And just for the sake of clarity, using one hyphen in your domain name is a bad idea, using more than one hyphen is … In other words, it can affect click-thru-rates and therefore traffic. I agree I'm being a bit broad, but I would argue that in general, if you can convert URLs with unique content (vs. the very fine and useful usecase of linking to elements in a page) to use non-hash, static, more readable URL formats, it's a better idea. The last part of a domain name is what is referred to as a Top-level domain (TLD) (as in .com in www.abc.com). We recommend that you use hyphens (-) instead of … Image from SXC.hu. It is also known as a domain name extension. This will be a site with cracks etc In short, make it virtually impossible for online surfers not to … Having hyphens in the folder or page name portion of the URL does make the URLs harder to remember and type. Negative brand perception will result in high bounce rates as many people will begin to leave your site within a very short time. Mercedez Benz also decided to use the hyphen for their domain: One of the deprecated ranking factors was exact match domains (where your brand name or main target keyword and domain name had to match). It will help your brand to stay consistent. Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment. Hyphens and underscores in URLs: Are they treated the same? So having hyphens in the URL doesn’t really hurt the user experience in any way… it only helps by making the URL more readable. Using hyphens makes domain names seem untrustworthy and less credible. (See more about it from Webmaster Tools Help here.) SEO For The Big Three (Google, Bing, Yahoo) !! A note about top-level domains and sub-pages. There’s no negative impact on domain names that use dashes. While it likely doesn’t make any noticeable difference from an SEO perspective, having hyphens in a URL’s folder and page names certainly doesn’t hurt your rankings in the SERPs, and provides a benefit to users. Is it ok if I do "free-games.com" the domain "freegames.com" is inactive but parked. How bad is it to have a hyphen in your URL? But even if you stop targeting URLs with hyphen: auto, they may still break if they contain hyphens. If you are trying to make your site as SEO friendly as possible and you post something all about golf tips for example it would be useful if the url or address uses hyphens or dashes. If you need to use a hyphen in your domain name (for example best-chef.com), make sure that you purchase the non-hyphenated version (bestchef.com) and redirect it to your hyphenated version. It is much easier to tell someone to go to “we rock your web dot com” than it is to try to get them to remember “we hyphen rock hyphen your hyphen web dot com” Chances are they will forget the hyphens, insert them in the wrong place, or not know what a hyphen is to begin with. The Dark Art Of Search Engine Optimization. I'm currently trying to decide between two names/urls. I read that Google and Yahoo can. For the sake of this post let's say the two names are. I would, however, suggest keeping folder names short so that they have one, maybe two, hyphens at most. I currently have a new URL www.blue-widgets-for-you.com There are three hyphens in it. Does having special characters negatively impact my SEO? © SEO? People frequently ask whether or not using hyphens in a URL is good or bad for SEO. As you can see, hyphens have been used after the slash after the second-level domain. Hyphenated domains are difficult to remember and talk about. As Google’s algorithms got smarter, it did not matter anymore. Here are the reasons why: Here are the arguments brought to the fore by people in this school of thought: After looking at each of the sides, we decided to put each of their ideas to the test. Forums . Should You Use Hyphens in Domain Names in 2019? This could see your site’s rank decrease significantly. I try to select domain names that are: Having hyphens in the domain name portion of the URL is counter-productive to all three of the above usability goals. Avoid overly complex URLs that include multiple parameters. So hyphens in URLs can be good or bad from an SEO and user perspective. Hi Tomas - fair points and good additions. People frequently ask whether or not using hyphens in a URL is good or bad for SEO. There are times when using hyphens is necessary, for example, if your actual brand name contains it. The recipient is highly likely to forget to use the hyphens when entering your domain name. Also, every search engine that I am aware of treats hyphens in the URL as word separators. Hyphens in URLs: Good or bad for SEO? All these questions have been asked over and over and different schools of thought exist to try and settle the matter. Google treats a hyphen as a word separator, but does not treat an underscore that way. Do not be afraid to use them, but use them wisely. Here’s the most important thing you will ever hear in regards to your site’s URL structure: it should be as simple as possible.Of course, the word simple means something different to everyone. I also do it to give the search engines a hand by explicitly indicating how they should parse my URL’s folder and file names into their targeted keywords. Use hyphens in your folder and page names to increase readability and click-through-rates in the SERPs, but avoid using them in your domain names. For example buy-WidgetB-Cheap.com would actually have a negative effect on SEO, as it might be seen as an attempt at SERP spamming. Note the quoted section: Jonah Stein If your nicesly aged, non-hyphenated domain name contains your primary keyword, your 25% of the way to the top...10. It is probably one of the most frequently discussed topics on SEO forums around the web and is often one of the first questions asked by new webmasters. Some phrasal adjectives (including “civil rights,” “stock market,” and “high school”) don’t require hyphenation when they appear before a noun; they’re so well entrenched in the language that no risk of ambiguity exists, and their status is enshrined by inclusion in dictionaries.But when two words team together to describe a noun, they’re usually hyphenated. This sends signals to search engines that your site is low quality. You usually see it after clicking a specific link on a site, for example, another page as in www.abc.com/blog. Why using hyphens instead of underscores in your URLs is good? Disadvantages of hyphenated domain names. I'm an experimentalist, researcher, recording every step of how to rank number 1. you will see Matt Cutts' presentation on Google Search Website Optimization. But how often do you really think a user is going to remember the entire URL to some inner page 3 levels deep in your site and actually type it into the browser address bar? You can often see URLs like www.example.com/sub_folder/ that work just fine. They used three different domain names: — frictionlessowls.com – site had content rich with relevant keywords. This is quite common since most blog themes and templates convert the post title to a page name by replacing spaces and punctuation with a hyphen. Therefore, in … ... “Yeah, it was good. So I thought I would do what any red-blooded SEO would do… and toss out my opinions on the topic. After all, I wouldn’t want them interpreting “expertsexchange” as “expert sex change” when I meant it to be interpreted as “experts exchange”, or visa versa I guess! Here are a few URL strategies to employ: 1. A sub-page or sub-folder is basically what comes after the TLD. Hyphenated URL containing keywords are definitelty good for SEO with a few exceptions. Use Hyphens, Not Underscores. Putting the two schools to the test: do hyphens impact SEO? And that can still cause confusion because it isn’t clear whether the hyphen is part of the URL or was added to hyphenate the paragraph. Tweet Avoid being penalized for duplicate content by blocking search engines from indexing multiple URLs to the same content and other problematic URLs. You use a keyworded title and good keyword placement in your post. This does not by any chance make your domain unique. Hyphens: (good-domain.com) Homonyms: (suite-domain.com) Abbreviations (2cool-domain.com) You get the general idea. Replace it with a dash or concatenate it. This school of thought argues that hyphens should be used as part of domain names. 0. ... You can’t include spaces in a URL, so SEO best practice is to use hyphens to separate words. Hyphens in URLs: Good or Bad for SEO? This will signal to Google where the breaks between words are, and make it easier for your visitors to understand URLs than if the words all ran together. Go for a short, simple, catchy and easy to remember domain name. Joined Jun 6, 2006 Messages 10,485. Are you familiar with these. Using them makes it easy for search engines to match keywords in the URL to keywords in the search phrase. Deciding on a domain name is one decision where usability benefits almost always outweigh the SEO benefits. Thread starter djbaxter; Start date Nov 27, 2007; Nov 27, 2007. If a user misses even a single hyphen when typing your brand name, they are highly likely to end up on your competitor’s site or web page. Adds an extra character to the domain name. All these questions have been asked over and over and different schools of thought exist to try and settle the matter. Try not to be spammy. Backlinks are an important ranking factor for your site as they are a vote from other sites that your site is authoritative and has high-quality content. What your domain should include or not include has been an ongoing discussion among brands, webmasters and marketers. It is probably one of the most frequently discussed topics on SEO forums around the web and is often one of the first questions asked by new webmasters. It is hard enough for users to try and remember one hyphen. May pose some recall issues as people are generally used to domains without hyphens. Is that too many ? hyphen in url. Oh, I’ve Heard Of That Before !! Almost never! Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by aspotism, Feb 23, 2005. (Leave them open after a noun, however.) 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