Use hyphens in URLs

Google's search systems interpret hyphens in URLs as word boundaries, enabling it to match the URL against individual keyword queries. Underscores join words into a single token, meaning /seo_practices is seen as one word 'seopractices' rather than two separate words 'seo' and 'practices'.

Quick Reference

• Use hyphens (-) to separate words in URLs — Google treats hyphens as word separators, underscores as part of the word
• /best-seo-practices is better than /best_seo_practices or /bestseopractices
• Changing existing URLs from underscores to hyphens requires 301 redirects to preserve link equity

Check

Inspect the URL path segment of each page. Flag any URL that contains: (1) Underscores (_) as word separators (e.g., /best_practices). (2) Spaces encoded as %20 or + in path segments. (3) Mixed separators in the same URL (e.g., /best-practices_guide). Report the count of non-hyphenated URLs by category.

Fix

1. Identify all pages with underscores or spaces in URL path segments.
2. Generate the hyphenated equivalent: replace _ with -, spaces/%20 with -.
3. Set up 301 permanent redirects from the old URLs to the new hyph…