Comments on: Underscores vs. Dashes – SEO Tip

By: Tim Acheson

Tim Acheson — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:20:30 +0000

Having devoted considerable time to this question during my career, particularly in recent years, I can only conclude that dashes are not the best delimiter. Moreover, I believe a consensus will emerge eventually with an alternative character being used universally — probably the underscore:-

http://www.timacheson.com/Blog/2009/aug/friendly_url_should_not_use_dashes_to_represent_spaces

By: Wonkie Cartoons

Wonkie Cartoons — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:50:27 +0000

Hey this was really handy to know – my page titles are created automatically with ‘-’ in wordpress and some of them are pretty long.. is there a rule of thumb to use about the number of dashes in a webpage name (concerned about your comment that you should not have too many dashes).

I have a cartoon site and the names of the cartoon image files also contain dashes – I surfed a bit through your site but could not find any articles as to how to best optimise for these cartoon files for indexing under google images – it seems pretty random how things are getting into the index even though the naming conventions/ alt tags/ title tags etc are all handled consistently on the site! Any suggestions would be much much appreciated!

Thanks

By: Jeff Paul Internet Millions

Jeff Paul Internet Millions — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:21:38 +0000

Internet marketing is indeed very different from traditional marketing. In the field of internet marketing the webmaster uses all possible means for promotion just from the comfort of his small office or his bedroom.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:35:57 +0000

Simple but informing. This article just answered a questions I’ve had for weeks now. Thank you!
I’ll continuing using dashes!

- Jason

By: Jadehat, the SEO consultant» Blog Archive » Speedlinking #1

Jadehat, the SEO consultant» Blog Archive » Speedlinking #1 — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:01:22 +0000

[...] finally, Chris Alexander makes a post on Big Oak SEO blog about hyphens-and_underscores. [...]

By: Chris Alexander

Chris Alexander — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:11:57 +0000

Using a single hyphen or even a couple hyphens in a domain name is perfectly fine. If you have a domain name with 5 or more hyphens, then you could run into not only SEO problems, but usability problems as well.

It’s my personal preference not to use hyphens in domain names, because it’s easier to tell some one, “Go to big oak inc dot com,” instead of saying, “Go to big hyphen oak hyphen inc dot com.”

By: Wordpress Advice

Wordpress Advice — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:44:59 +0000

I must ask why having a hyphen in your domain name is a bad idea, while it is not bad for filenames. I heard this from others as well. I have a single hyphen in my domain name. Is that bad ? or you just consider having more then one as bad ?

By: Wordpress Advice

Wordpress Advice — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 03:28:40 +0000

Two Thumbs up. You made me a fan. I guess I have to read the rest of your advice for the last size months.

By: Francisco Cheng

Francisco Cheng — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:29:53 +0000

I never completely understood why we use dashes instead of underscore. Now that I read your post, it really makes sense.

By: Chris Alexander

Chris Alexander — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:34:02 +0000

Steven,
I wouldn’t worry about the number of hyphens in the blog post title or file names. I was warning against registering a domain name with too many hyphens. For example, making your domain name something like search-engine-optimization-seo-website-design-application-development-services.com is probably a very bad idea in many ways.