When it comes to search engine optimization, those details include some important quirks you need to know about.
Conforming to search engine behavior
Keeping-up with changes in search engine behavior
Playing well with other websites to protect your SEO
Avoiding common practices that obstruct SEO
Here are nine examples of what I call SEO quirks. See how many you know about.
1. In Subfolder & File Names, Use Dashes, Not Underscores
Good: http://www.domain.com/sub-folder/file-name.htm
Bad: http://www.domain.com/sub_folder/file_name.htm
Many developers favor separating words in file names with underscores (_) instead of hyphens (-). They are conditioned to this behavior because some programming languages reserve the hyphen, for example, as the subtraction infix operator.
On the other hand, Google was written for nerds by nerds; the search engine tends to see underscores as concatenation, or joiners, so technical terms like FTP_BINARY will appear on search results pages.
If you are creating a new website, use hyphens.
If you have a small website without a lot of inboud links, change existing URLs to hyphens and 301 redirect old URLs to new URLs.
If you have an enterprise site that uses underscores, keep your old URLs and CMS rules, but switch from underscores to hyphens as the naming convention for all new file names.
A word of caution, keep the number of words and hyphens to a reasonable amount. On category name or topic level pages, I suggest short and sweet, one or two hyphens. When you create file names for articles, you have a lot more leeway; try not to go to town or stuff keywords.
2. Avoid Dashes In Domain Names
Select a domain that is your brand or represents your business in a concise, professional manner without dashes. Do not worry about keywords. While I do not know of any technical reason not to use dashes in domain names, from a practical perspective, they look cheap and compromising. That may raise a caution flag when you reach out for links and citations.
