Using Capital in URLs is good or bad for SEO

Using Capital in URLs is good or bad for SEO. If i capitalize first letter of the keyword in the URL is it good or Spammy for Google.

Capital letters can serve as a good word separator, but I think hyphens would be a better choice if you’re going to use it for that. About the first letter being a capital letter, if it’s in the latter part of the URL, i.e. not the domain, I think it’s cool. If it’s in the domain, it’s not going to have any bearing as far as I know. Just be sure that you separate words well. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this, but you should prevent any naming fiasco just like what happened with Pen Island and Experts Exchange.

It won’t affect anyhow your ranking in google, no matter you use seo or SEO… it is the same :wink:

dash would be better, but again I dont think it will have any significant effect.

It may have an effect if you are let’s say in top 5 positions on a keyword, it can trigger the attention of users.

I would advise you to stick to all lower-case for your URL, for the simple reason that many web servers treat URLs as case-sensitive - at least, for the part after the domain name. So, for example, if you have a page named MyPage.HTML at a site named [noparse]www.example.com[/noparse], then a visitor will get a 404 error if they try to go to [noparse]www.example.com/mypage.html[/noparse]

This is yet another example of where you should make your decisions based on the needs of the visitor, not the search engines.

Mike

Please make a special note that the Domain Name is case-insensitive but everything that follows is case sensitive, any case variations instantly result in a 404 unless caught, analysed and routed to the closest match.

Since starting about five years ago various SEO URL methods have been tried and now plagued with thousands of old backlinks. A recent site overhaul included making all page title and associated links more user friendly, humanly readable and cAsE-InSeNsItIvE. Mission accomplished and I can now sleep easy at nights :slight_smile:

One point that has not been mentioned is to have a unique Canonical Metalink (oxymoron ?) for each page to try and keep the routers happy.

I just noticed and tested this Sitepoint forum thread, a numeric GET variable ( 839387 ) is passed followed by the user friendly case-insensitive SEO page title:

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?839387-USING-CAPITAL-in-URLs-is-GOOD-or-BAD-for-SEO

Hindsight is recommended before embarking on a course of action :slight_smile:

As of me Google seeing both the lower case URL and proper case URL as two distinct pages and penalizing you for duplicate content. If everything was lowercase then the chances of a visitor typing it differently (i.e. not capitalizing a particular word like ‘chicago’) would be less likely.

Using Capital Letters in URL is no harm, until the URL is Accessible for user’s in both small and capital letters. However, I suggest having small letters in URL is Better than going for Capital letters.

Nicely put.

Mike