I have the option of displaying URL's as either: http://mysite.com/my-exciting-article.html OR: http://mysite.com/my exciting article.html Basically, either using URL encoding which speeds up the loading of the pages or without. Does it make any difference in the optimization of the page?
Yes IMHO...G reads the - as a space, this is a known fact. However I would not, could not, give the same assurance for spaces as %20. So play safe. Also G has a liking for speed of loading so why go against this?
According to this study: http://www.seomoz.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php it seems there is a concensus that 2 or more hyphens in an URL can be a penalizing factor. Is it true? I dunno, but those guys are smart.
Thanks for the advice guys, any chance that underscores or removing the spaces all together will work as as well or better then hyphens?
I would stay away from it if you are making it look spammy but if its a legit URL name then go for it. The theory started for the main reason is people started stuffing keywords into their URL and it made them all look spammy. Like domain.com/articles/health-fitness-gym-workout.php Does it get penalized? I doubt it. If my competitor had his URLs like that would I report him? Why of course.
Use dashes instead of underscrores. Just make the URL the way it makes since to do so. If you are putting keywords in there just for the fact of having keywords then its not the right way to go.
Interesting study. Thanks for the link. From what I've read on these boards, hyphens work better than underscores for Google if you're going for keywords with spaces in between. There was a good thread on this but I don't have the link handy. Sorry
If you just want a good static link why not do something like: http://www.example.com/sports/plays/football-handbook.html That's a totally legitimate URL and I jammed 4 good keywords into it.
This is a good technique As for the study ... the 2 or more hyphen was well down the list of "badness" so much so that i would query the usefulness of that "bad" effect. IMHO the normal effect would be the same as for titles that go on and on in that the SE will drop off the words that are further down the title or in this case the URL/hyphens [read spaces]. As for underscores they are read as computer language [not a space] rather than as a "space" as the hyhen is in html
I use some long url’s without penalty. They are relevant to the site. Example: http://www.bransoncritic.org/Heath_Hawkins_tall_timbers_lumberjack_show.htm Google Serps http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Tall+Timbers+Lumberjack&btnG=Google+Search D