Answer: Fortunately, my answer will make both you and your communications manager happy. Search engines treat hyphens as word separators and nothing more (as they should). So, using "plus-size" or any other hyphenated combination is exactly like using the same words separated by spaces.

This applies to actual searches, too. When a user types hyphenated words into the search engine, the search engine performs a multiple word search, as if the hyphens don't exist.

In other words, the search engine makes no distinction between hyphenated words and the same combination of words separated by spaces.

That's one of the reasons why SEO-friendly URLs make such a big difference. URLS that contain multiple important keywords, separated by hyphens, tend to place higher in organic search results than URLs that are all one word, with no separators. For example, www.important-keyword.com will rank higher than www.importantkeyword.com, because in the first case, the search engines recognize "important" and "keyword" as search terms. In the second case, they see "importantkeyword," a word that doesn't really exist, as the search term.

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About the Author

Jeff Jones is a Web-optimization specialist at Lyris. He helps companies improve their Web sites, SEO results and PPC-campaign performance.

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