New Page Extensions

[RounderStaked]

I am expanding my site, and wondering if the url made a difference, for example:

xxxxx.com/poker_room_reviews.html vs. xxxxx.com/poker-room-reviews.html

are either of these more beneficial in terms of SEO?

[losercore]

From what I understand the "_" and "-" are the same.

My understanding is Google just sees these as white space.

[RounderStaked]

thanks, thats what i thought,

correct me of im wrong but without a dash or underscore to seperate keywords the search engines will consider xxxxx.com/pokerroomreview to be all one long word?

[Kyle]

Originally Posted by RounderStaked

I am expanding my site, and wondering if the url made a difference, for example:

xxxxx.com/poker_room_reviews.html vs. xxxxx.com/poker-room-reviews.html

are either of these more beneficial in terms of SEO?

"-" seperates the words, while "_" strings the words together as one.

[PPP]

.

[SuperAffiliate]

Originally Posted by RounderStaked

thanks, thats what i thought,

correct me of im wrong but without a dash or underscore to seperate keywords the search engines will consider xxxxx.com/pokerroomreview to be all one long word?

Yes they will so you better use those "-" signs like Kyle said.

[Georgia Poker]

What about CMS's that use "+"

[Jeremy]

What about CMS's that use "+"

That's a really good question actually. I have wondered about this as well as PAW has + signs. Although I agree that perhaps the - or _ may be better, I question how big of a difference it actually makes when you provide solid fresh content and constantly add good backlinks.

My concern would be changing the entire CMS to substitute the + with a new sign. I think it could probably cause way more damage than good. I have a + CMS and I will be the first to say we get hundreds of google hits each day on these pages from the content on the pages and not the title or URL.

I guess it's a catch 22 but in my opinion if you are doing the fundamentals of adding content, inner linking, clean html, and gaining external links from quality sites and pages, I don't think it is going to make a tremendous difference either way if you use a _, -, or +.

Just my 2 cents, but again I don't claim to be an SEO expert.

[adioking]

Here's something I learned at Pubcon. They currently count "_" as a void character and "-" as a space. However, the search engines realize that MANY people use the underscore "_" as a space and are going to count that as a space in the future. However, there is no telling exactly what the "future" is going to be.

[Kyle]

Originally Posted by Georgia Poker

What about CMS's that use "+"

What about them? As far as SEO purposes are concerned that makes no difference to the "-", they both seperate the word.