Do you want the FACTS or the myth? If you like myths then listen to all of these replies. If you want the facts pull up a chair. You need to first decide are you registering you domain name for SEO purposes or for humans. Humans don't like hyphens. It's too difficult to remember all the hyphens and it much more difficult for people to say it. For instance: (speaking) digitalpoint dot com as opposed to digital hyphen point dot com. For this reason you might consider the non hyphen version. BUT... Hyphens are used by the engines as separators. So you original assumption about applesbananas is absolutely spot on. Search engines index words not page or websites - WORDS. This is why I say you need to decide who your registering the domain name for - humans or engines. If it's for maximum SEO potential, and you domain is a multiple word name, then you'll want the hyphen version so that the words apple and banana are indexed separately just as you had assumed. But why not go for the best of both worlds. Register both versions and 301 the non hyphen version to the hyphen version. This way you accommodate both humans and search engines.
do you see any hypenated domains topping any keywords? i dont. and yes google sees hyphens as space but that doesnt mean it wont give bonus to non-hyphened domains, besides you will loose some traffic because of the hyphen.
FAIL! Yes actually I do. Try any keyword pr phrase related to blogging and in the top 5 results you'll see entrepreneurs-journey.com. No the hyphen is NOT a space its a separator. Anyone with any REAL IT or programming knowledge understands the difference between a space and a separator. And YES it will give you the bonus of having multiple keywords that are actual words not some mish mosh jargon that is not a dictionary word that the search engine doesn't understand how to separate and a user would never search for. I guess if you had even the slightest bit of programming knowledge you'd understand why this is logical as well as factual. Finally, you won't lose any traffic at all if you know what your doing. Clearly you don't know what your doing because you think somehow you'll lose traffic. Thanks for the laugh. You should be a comedian because you are funny.
Thank you mighty programmer for enlightening us! What you don't know, or at least you forgot to mention is that space CAN BE a separator. SEPARATOR is not a category, is not contained by any programming principle, but rather a convention - I, the PROGRAMMER choose to have "##$*((#$*(#" as a separator. As for the URLs, I don't think big G treats them like clear and simple text. And the "hyphen / no-hyphen dilemma" should be one of the topics on the last places on your SEO list. And BREAKING NEWS: G seems to be identifying words in URLs even if the hyphen (the almighty father of all separators) is missing :
LOL mighty programmer? Okay sure, why not. Search engines read HTML. HTML does not use a space as a separator, rather it converts spaces to an HTML special character. So while I do agree that a space CAN be a separator, in this discussion it is not nor can it be used as one. It is not HTML compliant. Your breaking news is bit off kilter as well. Okay so the results show pages or urls that don't use a hyphen. So what? Does that mean that the domain name is being separated to 'used' and 'cars'? Absolutely not. The keyword in the url is usedcars. The sites being listed though all have loads of content related to used cars, have loads of back links with relevant anchor text and therefore get the top rankings. But if you go and buy the domain name used-cars.com and get an equal number of equal authority back links, then load your site with relevant content to used cars, you will own the front page of the SERP. And the reason you will is because the search engine will like your site just a little bit better because your keywords are in your url. This discussion is not about finding out if you can get listed. This discussion (at least I think, I've asked, but no reply yet) is about the SEO value of a url with a hyphen or not. As I've explained, if you want SEO benefit then yes. If you want best user experience it doesn't even matter.
I was only trying to point out that G identified the keywords without the use of any hyphens. From your previous post, I was under the impression that G is a bit blind and NEEDS hyphens so he can identify words in the URLs, which is totally wrong, as the picture above shows. As for the space, you are right : HTML-wise cannot be considered a separator.
No hyphen is best by far, but in many cases this is not possible. In the case of Sports Betting, sportsbetting.com is the key domain, however sports-betting.com is also a strrong contender. No hyphens are more easy to brand and explain compared to domains with hyphens.
Your original impression of what I was saying is exactly what I was saying. Google does not/cannot differentiate/identify the 2 keywords when there is no hyphen. That has no bearing on the fact that the combined words in the url can still rank. The reason we know this to be factual is similar to how dns works. http://www. and .com is stripped back and you are then left with the word to be indexed. usedcars is the word that would be indexed from the url. But the on page content would have used and cars indexed which is why these sites rank and has nothing to do with url but rather the on page content. As I explained in my example, registering the used-cars.whatever with an equal number of links and relevant content and you'll rank higher because of the in-url keyword. It's not going to be enough to get you from page 10 to page 1. But it might just be enough to get your from result #12 on page 2 to #1 on page 1. In terms of CTR that has a big impact.
Definitely without hyphen! While it's true that Google won't always spot the keywords in a non-hyphen domain, make a little test and you'll see that it's not always the case. And I may be wrong, but I'm sure Google will be better and better at this anyway, so all this hyphen domain names could be a total waste in some years. Anyway, as someone already said, what do you prefer: digitalpoint or digital-point, by exemple? Oh and wait, make a search on Google for "digital point" and see for yourself if Google can't spot the keywords in domain names...
My vote goes for not having a hyphen. Usually, if you can't find the domain you want, then you can find something very similar without using a hyphen. The only reason I don't prefer hyphens is because people sometimes see your site in passing and forget the hyphen. This leads them to not visit when they wanted to. Single word sites work best, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
This is not correct. Google isn't spotting keywords in the domain name its spotting them in the content and in anchor text on inbound links. This is very different to being able to take the word digitalpoint and know exactly how and where to separate the word. Hence the programmatic use of the hyphen separator. Without a separator it's one big word. This is why I said on page 1 of this thread make the decision if you are registering your domain for the maximum SEO benefit, or for the best user experience. I totally agree with your theory but that is only from a human perspective. However from a search engines perspective (lets try to remember that even though googlebot is very smart, it's still just a computer program) it doesn't care and it will remember either version, and it will also display either version based on the relevance of a site compared to the search query. The url makes no difference to the engine other than identifying keywords and ranking those words based on relevancy and authority. It doesn't care if your site is digitalpoint or digital-point unless you are competing with another site. That's when it will factor in the keywords in the domain, as well as all of those other factors. Lets say you have 2 sites competing for rank. One site is bluewidgets.com and the other is blue-widgets.com. Let's also assume that ranking score is out of 100 points. Finally we assume that a user does a search for 'blue widgets'. Now lets assume that without factoring in the domain name that both sites score a 95. They are currently viewed by the engine as complete equals. But the engine can't deal with that. It needs a winner to put into 1st place. So now the engine needs to make a decision as to which site is the most relevant for the search query. It has already used every other ranking factor available to it and all that it has left to use to make it's decision is the domain name. For one site it see the word bluewidgets. It looks at that and sees a synonym. Looks good so far. So it then compares that to the other site and see 2 words. Those words are blue and widgets. The search engines now notices that the domain name is a 100% match for the search query and...hello we have a winner. I hope this clears this up once and for all. If you're still confused, I wrote a very concise post on my blog about exactly how search engines work. For anyone with any confusion I'd suggest you take a few minutes out of your day and check it out. The Definitive SEO Guide to Search Engines The key points are that most people seem to have the idea that search engines are as clever as human beings and that search engines index web pages, or web sites. This notion is completely wrong. Search engines index words and words only. Each instance of a word is recorded and referenced against it's location and then compared to every other web page where that word appears. It delivers its results based on the best matching web page (location) where that word was found, based on all the ranking factors that it can use. SEO is simply the process of delivering those words to the search engine, in a way that the search engine wants to see it. The engines will give a tick or a cross for each of those factors for the words it finds on your pages. The more ticks you get, the higher you rank. Finally, we could argue about this all day but if you didn't read the whole thread and you reply to this post with some dumb ass comment that doesn't take into account everything that has already been discussed, expect me to burn you, and hard. If you think I am wrong, that's Okay. I still want to hear from you. All I ask is to support your statements with some facts, or some reference material so that we can all verify what you are saying is at least based on some fact or actual tests that have been performed. Last statement: I'll repeat what I said earlier that humans prefer no hyphen, engines prefer the hyphen in order to understand that there is more than one word. Hyphens will not move your site from page 10 to page 1 but it may be enough to move you from position 12 to position 1. That is all.
It finally boils down to getting your targeted high demand key word. If the keyword is not available which is most likely, then it is always a better option to go for 'including the hyphen'! Regards, RightMan
Good content and backlinks is the key. trust me. I own 3 domains with hyphens and are PR 5, 6 & 7 doesn't really matter to me, unless you do offline marketing, which is kind of ugly.
Sorry I may have missed the point but why should anyone trust you? Because you have a whole 3 domains? You give no evidence, demonstration or example to back up your claims. The thread is not about content or backlinks it's about the validity and use of hyphens in a domain name. Content and backlinks are totally irrelevant to this discussion. Welcome to the oven.