How much do URLs matter to search engines and hub views?

1. 69

   katleighposted 7 years ago

   I take out all the hyphens when I make my URl for my articles. To me it just looks nicer. For example (not a real hub) hubpages.com/notarealhub is what I would use as opposed to the recommended hubpages.com/Not-a-Real-Hub which to me looks really ugly.
   However, I've begun to notice that pretty much every sites uses hyphens to separate their words. Is this an issue?

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2. 77

   lobobrandonposted 7 years ago

   I would keep the dashes.

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3. 84

   Marisa Wrightposted 7 years ago

   Lobobrandon, I can remember when we were told NOT to use dashes on URL's.  The reason was that if someone remembers the URL and wants to type it in, they won't know there are dashes there.  For instance, let's say my website's URL is bellydance-oz.com and I tell someone that - they won't remember there are hyphens and might type it in incorrectly.  So it's better to make it bellydanceoz
   
   However, that's not really relevant with article URL's on HubPages because they are typically too long for someone to remember anyway!

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   1. 69

      katleighposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      See that's what I was thinking!
      Since things go back and forth on that, I'll just try and make my URL as clean-looking as possible.

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4. 93

   Glenn Stokposted 7 years ago

   Why are you just removing hyphens. When I publish hubs I completely change the URL to be more general than the title itself. Shorter too. That allows for title changes in the future without the URL seeming to be a completely different subject. I wrote about that in my recent tutorial hub.
   
   I do use hyphens just to separate the words, though.

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   1. 69

      katleighposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I also shorten it, but I'm more worried about the hyphens.

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5. 50

   Dasia Tostonposted 7 years ago

   Besides working on my own blog hyphens are usually not in the URL. When making my hub articles the editing button to edit URLs were overlooked. Knowing editing a URL is an option brings a new issue. Is there a way to edit previous submitted hubs URL?

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   1. 84

      Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      No, once you've got past that screen you can't change the URL

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6. 61

   Jason mackenzieposted 7 years ago

   As far as you can help it, avoid the dashes. They clutter the url and are difficult to remember for someone who might be searching for your topic. And including them does not make any difference to your search engine raking.

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