What do you think about dashes in titles?

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   easyspeakposted 14 years ago

   What do you think about dashes in titles?  Does it affect the SEO of that hub?

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      sunforgedposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      good seo practice for URL, no purpose in titles

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         easyspeakposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         what about if the title makes more sense with a dash?  i use it as a way to keep it from getting too long.

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            Ultimate Hubberposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            If it is necessary, place it in the title. Google won't mind it. Even WikiPedia places a dash in its page titles.

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            darksideposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Can you give some examples?

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               easyspeakposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               Charity Water - Clean Water Projects
               
               I'm trying to do 2 keyword phrases without making it too long.

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                  darksideposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  That will work.
                  
                  One thing I'd be mindful of is when I'm creating the URL, that you add that dash in after the URL is claimed.
                  
                  Otherwise it'll have three dashes in a row in the URL.
                  
                  I like to keep the URLs tidy, and preferably all lower case:
                  
                  hub/charity-water-clean-water-projects
                  
                  rather than:
                  
                  hub/Charity-Water---Clean-Water-Projects

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                     Ultimate Hubberposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                     Darkside, try starting a hub with a hyphen in its title and you'll find out that HP has already taken care of this issue.

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                        darksideposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                        That's been tidied up? Excellent.

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                     easyspeakposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                     all good points.  things I am incorporating as I go along.  have lots of early hubs with 3 dashes in a row and capitalized words in the URL...too bad we can't go back and change the url.

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                        darksideposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                        Thankfully the hubpages.com server resolves a URL that is/is not capitalized to the originally claimed URL.
                        
                        The biggest drawback is when people communicate to another person (any) URL and they repeat it verbatim. That is to say that they also tell them which words to capitalize.
                        
                        Which does happen.
                        
                        So instead of spelling out "hubpages dot com slash hub slash charity dash water dash clean dash water dash projects" (which is mouthful, but still straight forward) they'd be saying "hubpages dot com slash hub slash charity with a capital c dash water with a capital w dash clean with a capital c dash water with a capital w dash projects with a capital p"
                        
                        It of course doesn't matter to HubPages (with a capital H and P ) but for some sites it does so some people are in the habit of being sure they're 100% correct in repeating a URL.
                        
                        I've seen (and heard) it happen over the phone and also in offices from one cubicle to another.

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                  3. 79

                     thisisoliposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                     Definately follow darksides advice on checking your Hub URL.
                     
                     You may also want to consider using vocabulary based alternatives, such as 'and' this wont make much difference to your title length, but may make the title seem a little more natural.  I would say it was a personal preference though, with little real SEO impact.

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      2Tonyposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I think I'm right in saying that in titles it doesn't really matter.
      In wordpress the title of a blog post attaches on to the main URL with a dash after every word.
      However in a main URL, out side of Hubpages it now seems that it is frown on by google; because of spammers over using them in the passed.   
      
      T       U.K.

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2. 76

   MyWebsposted 14 years ago

   I don't see dashes making sense in a title unless it should be in a hyphenated word.
   
   In my opinion if your title is that long then its not well targeted to your hubs keywords.
   
   Personally I use titles for my main keyword phrase, or maybe add something like 'How to' to the keywords.

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   DanPowersposted 14 years ago

   It's OK for a hub - just don't buy a domain name with a hypen!

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   Uninvited Writerposted 14 years ago

   I use dashes instead of colons when necessary in my titles.

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   WebbyAvatarposted 14 years ago

   What does a dash refer to in this thread topic - a hyphen or underscore or both?

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   gravitywebsourcesposted 14 years ago

   I use dashes to sepearate site name in few of my sites. in newer sites i am using "::" for seperating my titles and site name.

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   chinweikeposted 14 years ago

   is ok, you can use dash to join two or more sentenses in your title

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   jacobkuttytaposted 14 years ago

   I dnon't think any negative effect in using dash in the title.
   
   I use very often

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   PMS9posted 14 years ago

   Dashes are used to avoid blank spaces.. spaces makes complicated to programmer for example if you not give dash or underscore then in execution of that link will show %20 as for spaces. so dashes are used to avoid %20 this value.

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    CarpetDiemposted 14 years ago

    I think the OP should clarify if they mean dashes in the TITLE or in the URL (big difference). Dashes in the title if needed are just fine and I don't think matter. Dashes in the domain name can look spammy, but in the post url are normal.
    But again, how about clarifying and providing an example?

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    Dolores Monetposted 14 years ago

    I love dashes and think that they sometimes make a title more readable. You could use a semi-colon but dashes are more fun.

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       easyspeakposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       dolores thanks for the input...I feel the same way.  But didn't know if it affected SEO

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          Ultimate Hubberposted 14 years agoin reply to this

          It does NOT. Why would it? There are way more myths about SEO than reality. In reality SEO is simple. Take SEO easy and it will eventually work for you.

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    lovelypaperposted 14 years ago

    This interesting. I use dashes in my titles quite often.

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    Cagsilposted 14 years ago

    The Life In A Day - Chain of Events From One Choice
    
    If it matters, I used this as a title.
    
    This is the actual URL
    
    http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Life-In-A-D … One-Choice
    
    Not promoting...just an example.

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