Mixing hyphens and underscores in a url
-
Hello.
I am working on a site that was built with underscores in the urls, but only in the page names, not in the subdirectories. All the subdirectories have one-word names.
So a typical url is "example.com/sub1/sub2/page_name."
We would like to change the name of one of the subdirectories to a name that would be very useful for SEO, but this new name is a hyphenated word, let's call it "new-sub."
If we changed "sub2" to "new-sub" then our url would have a mix of underscores and hyphens: example.com/sub1/new-sub/page_name. But if I used "new_sub" instead, google would read the words as connected with an underscore, instead of reading the subdirectory as a hyphenated word, which would be less useful for SEO.
It seems like it might be a problem to have a hyphen in a subdirectory and underscores in the page names. But I want the SEO value of the hyphenated word.
Any recommendations?
Thank you!
-
Thank you!
-
Thank you, Ian!
-
Any recommendations?
If this was my site I would not worry about it.
-
Matt Cutts did a video on this exact issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQcSFsQyct8
Generally, you should just stick to either underscores or hyphens and not mix the two.
If you want to change all of the underscores to hyphens then make sure you 301 redirect all of the old urls to the new ones. This can be a total pain if your site is huge, but would be necessary if you change the URLs.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Making Shopify URL's Simpler - Losing the words 'collection', 'product' and 'page' in a Shopify store URL. Any advice?
Hi Mozers! I have a Shopify store (of which there are many advantages) however one big SEO disadvantage, is that my URL structures contravene all Moz advice on dynamic URL structure and whats more I am reminded about this every week when I have a Moz site crawl and I have a batch of URL's that are longe than the 75 characters. A Shopify URL will run www.domain name.com/collections/collection-name/product/product-name. According to advice a it should be www.domain name.com/collection-name/product-name - Don't even get started on sub-collections! I sell portfolio books, album etc and keepsake memory boxes (so long keywords) AND, I have a long(ish) business name. So, For user experience and keyword length, do I just ignore trying to achieve a dynamic URL under 75 characters? When I have asked Shopify, the say their URL's are an integral part of the "Ruby on Rails" system, so nothing can be done Or can it ??? I can't be the only Moz member with this issue can I ??
On-Page Optimization | | nick_HandCo0 -
Best practice for URL structure - short and sweet, or double keyword?
We are just about to re-jig our main category pages and have found that different leading sites have taking different views on short and sweet url structure vs. repeated keywords1. For our website we have two options. We have two options: mywebsite.com/browse/birmingham/restaurants-in-birmingham or mywebsite.com/browse/birmingham/restaurants Someone like opentable have gone for short and sweet (opentable.co.uk/birmingham-restaurants) whereas people like Time Out have gone longer with multiple matches in the url (timeout.com/london/food-drink/londons-top-50-restaurants). Is there a consensus on which is better?
On-Page Optimization | | HireSpace0 -
When You Add a Robots.txt file to a website to block certain URLs, do they disappear from Google's index?
I have seen several websites recently that have have far too many webpages indexed by Google, because for each blog post they publish, Google might index the following: www.mywebsite.com/blog/title-of-post www.mywebsite.com/blog/tag/tag1 www.mywebsite.com/blog/tag/tag2 www.mywebsite.com/blog/category/categoryA etc My question is: if you add a robots.txt file that tells Google NOT to index pages in the "tag" and "category" folder, does that mean that the previously indexed pages will eventually disappear from Google's index? Or does it just mean that newly created pages won't get added to the index? Or does it mean nothing at all? thanks for any insight!
On-Page Optimization | | williammarlow0 -
Should ".html" in the URL or not?
Does URL like /wedding-dresses.html/f/price/2,100 with "html" in the middle do harm to SEO? Should I drop the ".html"?
On-Page Optimization | | StevenRoland0 -
URL Structure for Home Decorating site
Hi, I am about to launch a home decorating ideas website. I am stuck to determining the ideal URL structure, and the options are: Category: myhomedecoratingsite.com/room/master-suite/
On-Page Optimization | | adepalma
myhomedecoratingsite.com/kitchen/
myhomedecoratingsite.com/room/living
myhomedecoratingsite.com/master-suite/
myhomedecoratingsite.com/living-room/ Post: myhomedecoratingsite.com/interior/beautiful-master-suite/
myhomedecoratingsite.com/interior/cozy-living-room/
myhomedecoratingsite.com/room/master-suite/beautiful-modern-suite/
myhomedecoratingsite.com/room/living/cozy-contemporary-living Are these any good? What your best suggestion? Thanks in advance for your inputs. Al0 -
Wordpress pages URL's redirection.
I was checking W3C Markup Validation and in report it was shown that that pages (not post or any other URL's just PAGES) at investmentcontrarians.com are 301 redirected. e.g. original URL "http://www.investmentcontrarians.com/debt-crisis" which is redirected to "http://www.investmentcontrarians.com/debt-crisis/" I know that its not that serious issue, but still want to know why only pages are being redirected and how can we avoid it.
On-Page Optimization | | NumeroUnoWebSolutions0 -
URL for location pages
Hello all We would like to create clean, easy URLs for our large list of Location pages. If there are a few URLs for each of the pages, am I right when I'm saying we would like this to be the canonical? Right now we would like the URL to be: For example
On-Page Optimization | | Ferguson
Domain.com/locations/Columbus I have found some instances where there might be 2,3 or more locations in the same city,zip. My conclusion for these would be: adding their Branch id's on to the URL
Domain.com/locations/Columbus/0304 Is this an okay approach? We are unsure if the URL should have city,State,zip for SEO purposes?
The pages will have all of this info in it's content
BUT what would be best for SEO and ranking for a given location? Thank you for any info!0 -
Tool for Generating Sitemap/ URL List
HI, I'm looking for a tool that'll generate a URL list for a site. I looked at this thread here http://www.seomoz.org/q/online-sitemap-generator which came up when I searched for sitemap generator. However, I don't need a sitemap per se, and I don't need to submit it to Google - just a list of pages is what I need.If it updated automatically, that would be useful as well. Anyone know of a tool, on or offline? Or anyone used Xenu and know if it's what I'm looking for? Or is there a simple solution that I'm missing? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | 5225Marketing0
