The aim of this topic is to provide you with an overview to the benefits of including "-" dashes rather than "_" underscores in your URLs for Joomla. As always this topic is open to debate and people may agree or disagree with the content but it is only from my experience from using the Joomla open source CMS that I have found this to work and produce better results from the serps.

Please note the examples noted below are based on using the Joomla SEF Advance component.

By default the Joomla SEF Advance component currently uses "_" underscores in the url's rather than "-" dashes. So for example when you create a news article it might look like this "Joomla_seo_tips" but many SEO experts and web sites like seochat  suggest you will get better results from Google, Yahoo and MSN by using "-" dashes in your URLs rather than underscores.

The reason for using dashes "-" rather than underscores "_" in your URL's for Joomla is based on the fact that if you use underscores you are restricted to a specific phrase rather than a combination of keywords which people are searching on. For example if you create a document called Joomla_SEO_Tips then people will only find your article by typing the exact phrase "joomla seo tips". If you include "-" dashes then people can find the same article "joomla-seo-tips" using a combination of keyword searches " joomla seo" "seo tips " and so on.

Currently the default SEF "search engine friendly" for Joomla does not have the facility to provide you with the option to control the use of underscores or dahses in your url's. In order to achieve the above you will need to purchase a 3rd party component like SEF Advance. SEF Advance will provide you the complete control over your document titles and also supports the use of "_" underscores and "-" dashes. Please note we are not an affiliate or associated with the sakic.net web site but only recommend using SEF Advance because it will provide you with the control required to achieve the above.