Hyphens in URLs 'are search engine optimisation-friendly'

14:00 25th January 2010

Hyphens are the best way of separating words in a URL while still taking search engine optimisation into consideration.

That is the opinion of Ann Smarty, who said in an article for Search Engine Journal that there were disadvantages to using a space, a comma or a full stop in between words in URLs.

She said: "URL is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects that affect both SEO and usability."

Search engine optimisation could be boosted by placing keywords in the file path, although care should be taken to ensure the keywords occur naturally rather than just stuffing them in, she advised.

She said: "While Google has become much smarter when it comes to identifying separate words in the file path, a dash is still considered the best choice."

As most people now visit websites through bookmarks or by finding them through search engines, it is not as important as it used to be for a URL to be short, she added.

Ms Smarty also said that Google had started shortening longer URLs by using breadcrumbs in search engine results pages rather than displaying the whole URL.

Jill Kocher, search consulting services team manager at US marketing analytics company Covario, said in a post for Practical Ecommerce that a 301 redirect was the best way to change URLs to become more search engine optimisation-friendly.