Should you use hyphens or not use Hyphens on your blog post headlines and what effect will it have on page rankings in search engines

What is a Hyphen (-)?

Hyphenis a punctuation mark  that is used to  join and separate words or syllables.

Search Engine and Hyphen Relations

I responded to this question by a blogger who wanted to know how search engines handle hyphens on headlines or titles. In this case, we are going to use “Best SEO Semrush” and “Best SEO-Semrush”. The difference between the two is just a hyphen.

Placing hyphens in headlines is not helpful. Most search engines use hyphens  as minus (-) sign and  it sometimes means “but not” so search engine, do omit some search results with hyphen.

Best SEO Semrush vs Best SEO-Semrush 

In this case, you are telling search engines to search results for “Best SEO Semrush ” and when you include hyphen “Best SEO-Semrush”  you are telling search engines to give you results for Best SEO and avoid results with Sumrush term.
These means that most such results will be left out when you include hyphen.  Check below to see how a Google search brings different results because of including a hyphen.

Use of Hyphens for Refining Searches

Hyphens can also be useful for refining searches. For example, if your search for Best SEO returned too many  results with Semrush included and you were not interested in semrush, a search for Best SEO-Semrush should reduce BEST SEO results  with   Semrush  from showing up in your results.

Def: Semrush is a SEO tool used by millions of websites and top websites like Amazon, ebay for keyword research and tracking.

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