How to fix the Semrush Issue: Pages have underscores in URL

URLs are a fundamental part of your website’s structure and SEO strategy. While the difference between underscores and hyphens might seem small, it can significantly affect your site’s performance in search engines. Let’s explore why hyphens are recommended over underscores and how to address this issue without hurting your existing SEO efforts.

Why Underscores in URLs Are Considered Suboptimal

Search engines like Google prefer hyphens in URLs because they treat them as word separators. On the other hand, underscores are treated as connectors, which could potentially make it harder for search engines to interpret the content of your URL accurately.

For example, a URL like example.com/seo_tips may not be as clear to Google as example.com/seo-tips. While modern algorithms can handle underscores better than before, using hyphens is still the best practice.

Should You Change Existing URLs?

If your SEMrush audit flags underscores in your URLs, there’s no need to panic. Changing URLs can do more harm than good. When you alter a URL, you essentially delete the original page and create a new one. This can erase any SEO authority the page has built over time, which could harm your rankings.

There are 3 reasons to avoid changing existing URLs to remove underscores.

• It's a Warning, Not an Error:The issue of underscores in URLs is categorized as a low-priority warning, not an error. It's not significant enough to warrant making changes.
  

• Google's Improved Understanding:Google has become adept at interpreting URLs, even when words are separated by underscores. Therefore, the benefit of replacing underscores with hyphens is minimal.
  

• Potential SEO Downside:Changing a URL effectively creates a new webpage, removing the SEO authority and value built up by the original URL. This could lead to significant SEO losses, especially for pages that have been online for months or years.

Instead of changing URLs, focus on avoiding underscores in new URLs. Platforms like WordPress and Squarespace now default to hyphens, so this issue is less common than it used to be.

Rare Cases for Using Underscores

There are exceptions where underscores may be acceptable. For example, in software versioning (version_1_5), underscores are sometimes used to maintain clarity. Even in these cases, hyphens can be used without much disadvantage.

Best Practices Moving Forward

• Use hyphens for all new URLs to align with SEO best practices.

• Avoid changing existing URLs with underscores unless absolutely necessary.

• Ensure your content management system is configured to default to hyphens.

Conclusion

While underscores in URLs might raise a flag in SEMrush audits, the issue is not critical. Making proactive changes to your URLs could hurt your SEO more than help it. By sticking to hyphens for future URLs, you can avoid these issues and ensure optimal performance in search engines.