Is it worth changing urls with underscores?
-
A few pages on one of my sites have underscores linking keywords rather than hyphens (keywords_and_keyword rather than keyword-and-keyword). Possibly from a time before I knew hyphens were preferred...
One of the pages ranks well, and drives a good amount of traffic. The others do not do so well, but are still within the top 10 landing pages for the site.
Is it worth me changing the underscores to hyphens (setting up 301 redirects first of course) or doesn't it make that much difference?
-
Ive never seen any benefit proven and certainly wouldn't bother. Here's a short video from Matt Cutts answering just this question
-
Let's say that you gain a tiny advantage by changing... and.... Let's say you give up a tiny advantage by redirecting (lots of people believe that the links into a redirected page to not pass all of their ranking benefit to the new URL).
Based upon that you cancelled out some of the benefit - maybe the loss was greater than the gain?
So, if it was my site I would stick with what I have and use hyphens for all future pages.
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
-
Duplicate URL errors when URL's are unique
Hi All, I'm running through MOZ analytics site crawl report and it is showing numerous duplicate URL errors, but the URLs appear to be unique. I see that the majority of the URL's are the same, but shouldn't the different brands make them unique to one another? http://www.sierratradingpost.com/clearance~1/clothing~d~5/tech-couture~b~33328/ http://www.sierratradingpost.com/clearance~1/clothing~d~5/zobha~b~3072/ Any ideas as to why these would be shown as duplicate URL errors?
On-Page Optimization | | STP_SEO0 -
Is it still worth changing a url with half the pages target keyphrase in to the entire phrase still ?
Hi If a pages url has half the pages target keyphrase (i.e. 1 word instead of 2) is it still worth changing to include entire keyphrase (2 words) given need to then add 301 redirects etc after ? If it was a new page then I would definately include full keyphrase but the page is a few months old and has quite high page authority as is (i know a 301 should transfer most authority) but given this page and other sub pages would also need to be 301'd if this change occurs and the dev time/cost that would incurred/charged by the design/dev agency. Also thinking Google being cleverer now (the pages content will be about the target kw) so thinking G would work it out from rest of page content and partial match kw in url. In other words to best target keyphrase is it best to leave url as is or change url to include keyphrase ? For example if the pages target kw is 'swimming clubs' and the current url is www.franksleisurecentres.com/clubs changing it to www.franksleisurecentres.com/swimming-clubs :Thanks Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
URL best practices
Hi, I have a problem here, I used http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs.html instead of http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs. Hence, http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs will be caused 404 page. My question is should I change from faqs.html to faqs (no .html)? Thanks in advance any advice?
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Submitting URLs to Bing and Google
Does Submitting URLs to Bing and Google actually do anything? Is it worthwhile? What I mean is submitting intermittently individual URLS after already submitting the sitemap.
On-Page Optimization | | FCAbroad0 -
How important is it to include the target keyword phrase in the page URL?
If I want to target a keyword phrase to a particular phrase, but do not want to change the URL of that page, will that negatively impact my rankings? I am also wondering if I can get around it by creating a new, short URL that 301 redirects to the original URL. Would that be as effective as including the keyword in the original URL?
On-Page Optimization | | susannajbost0 -
Status of Ajax and SEO? Changing navigation from plain HTML to AJAX.
We will change an old school HTML drop down navigation for an AJAX drop down one. What's your experience in regards to Google indexing AJAX? I know that Google is now able to read more stuff than in the past, but I need some stories "from the trenches" if you're willing to share. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | gerardoH0 -
Google's Page Layout Algorithm Change
Hello Everyone, Google says they've implemented this change because they are answering the complaints of users who have to search for actual content after they've clicked on a result. They go on to say users want to see content right away. Now while most of this talk is about ads, I wonder if this will also apply to websites that are image and flash heavy above the fold with very little content. I am working on a few auto dealer sites where 99% of the content above the fold are flash banners and images. Below all of this noise you can find about 200 words of text talking about their dealerships. I'd love to know everyone's thoughts on this...Does the new page layout algorithm change apply to only ads or to images and flash as well? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | wparlaman0 -
Change from Table Based to DIV based
Hello, I am about to change my sitewide template from a table based one to a div based one. I am obviously worried about losing ranking and optimistic it hopefully may improve rankings. Any thoughts/experience on this? I have done my best to keep all content, tags (H, alt, title, etc) the same but figured I would see if anybody had any good tips/suggestions? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHerrigel0