Dashes and Hyphens again

I am creating a page which I am optimizing for a 2 word search term.

Lets say its "cat food" for example.

What is the best way to write the url for the search engines?
I want the separator to be interpreted as a space.

1) site.com/cat-food.htm

2) site.com/cat_food.htm

3) site.com/CatFood.htm

4) site.com/Cat-Food.htm

 

1) = one word you are specifying that they are to remain as one
2) = 2 words - but harder for a potential visitor to remember
3) Google will understand this as two words, especially when the words appear on the page as individual words.
4) = one word

5) site.com/catfood.htm might be better if you are on a linux server. Capitals are recognized, not the case with a windows server. either way your links should be consistent. While either 3 or 5 will resolve to the same page, as far as links go Google views them as two different pages.

Here is Matt Cutts take on the matter http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/ (I believe mine is an accurate short version, fee free to correct me if my memory if wrong )

 

Nope.

Nope.

It's even written TOGETHER and you think they recognize it as two words?

Nope.

There is no such word as "catfood". There is only "cat food", so why not go with "cat-food.html"?

Fascinating how you got everything wrong even after reading that.

 

I'm confused now lol.

I've gone with Cat-Food.htm for now.

My users don't have to remember the url. Its just for search engines.

 

One of my first Post Underscore vs dash which is better in url ?

Anyone who feels otherswise reply here or in blog and we can discuss it

 

Icheb
been a while since I read the post. You are right I did mix up the two here is the applicable sentence from Matt

:So if you have a url like word1_word2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for word1_word2 (which almost never happens). If you have a url like word1-word2, that page can be returned for the searches word1, word2, and even “word1 word2″

for _ the two words are grouped together, for - they are considered separate in a search.

 

Well Buddy,,,,,,, its very simple take my strategy for FREE,,,,,,,,,,,,,

site.com/Catfood.html

or

site.com/catfood.html

#1 The reason y i m not puting - coz its very short word but if say the keyword is "search engine optimization.htm" then u can put as search-engine-optimization.htm

#2 Reason capitalization is not required its required only when its necessary

for me i will chose site.com/Catfood.html

 

Google suggests that you use dashes.. site.com/i-like-cat-food.html

 

Google has document that they perfer the use of Hyphens.

See: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=993080