Page Titles

[Brightstar]

Hi Everyone,

I have been doing research on page names, and the likes of Mike Cutts (et al) recommend the use of hyphens in page names rather than underscores, which according to him is better for SEO.

Previously, both my brochure and product page names were -

master_mason_apron_standard.html

I have made a copy of the database and run a find and replace to convert all underscores to hyphens, the pages are now -

master-mason-apron-standard.html

Obviously, I expect this is going to have an effect on any natural listings I have at the moment in Google, and other search engines. I intend to create another .xml site map and submit it to Google.

However, before I make a fatal error, can anyone advise if I am doing the right thing?

At the moment I do not rank very well for some of my search terms anyway, so I taken the view I can't make things much worse then they are already, but I may be wrong!

Any advice greatly appreciated

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Steve,

Of course we're talking about page names here rather than titles. The Title being the bit that appears at the top of the browser (and on the serps pages). I know you know this, so just making sure no-one else gets confused.

I wouldn't argue against Matt Cutts on this. The main point being that google treats a hyphen (-) as a break between words and an underscore (_) as an invisible character.

So as an example, a tourist site might use the pagename pen-island.html. The keywords are clear (pen, island) and not likely to be misread as penisland.html could be if an underscore was used.

I don't see this as making a huge difference though. Google will identify individual words inside a long pagename. It's just that the signal might be stronger.

Still, if you're convinced that there's little to be lost, especially in terms of any lost external links, then you might as well fix it while the impact won't be too big.

Mike

[Brightstar]

Hi Mike,

Doh !!!

I have edited the post to Page Names.

Thanks for your input.

[guccij]

I'd set up a gazillion 301 redirects in your .htaccess file just so people who may have booked the old url get automatically redirected to the new one.

[cheaptents]

it is not to do with whether google treats them differently or not.

hypens are more user friendly than underscores (one key vs 2 keys) they also look a little nicer to some and are argued to be easier to remember.

I doubt it will impact search rankings in any way but if you have short ur;s it could effect how you are linked to and found by other means.