Question: I have found a couple of great domains in a niche I would like to develop. They are in the format word-wordword.com I'm wondering if this is something that Google frowns upon as opposed to having word-word-word.com or wordwordword.com? I haven't been able to find in relavant info on this topic. Please let me know what you think. Thanks!
I think the general consensus is that any hyphens weaken the strength of the domain. However I did some research some time back and I found that word order matters more than hyphens. I also found that overall your domain name is just a small part of what counts, so I would not stess too much about hyphens.
I would be more worried about what users will think about your domain than what search engines think about it. And a domain like word1-word2word3.com looks like total crap IMO. It looks like some 3rd rate, illegitimate site and I would never bother clicking on such a link. Either get word1-word2-word3.com or word1word2word3.com (preferable). Other than those two options, you're better off inventing a word that has no meaning. And as createdevelop eluded to, keyword rich domain names help very little with rankings. At Google they pretty much only provide a large boost to rankings when the search phrase EXACTLY matches the domain name. So at most the domain name is going to help you with the rankings of a single search phrase.
I wouldn't worry about the domain so much. Presumable you're going to write compelling material and SEO that. If you get everything else right, the benefit the domain give will be very small in comparison. And word-word-word.com domains rank just fine.
If I had it to do over again, I would find a non-hyphenated domain with my keywords because it's easier for users to remember without the hyphens. But I don't believe the SEs care one way or the other.
In my opinion, there is no need to worry about hyphens or no-hyphens in domains; as long as you are getting targeted traffic to your site. Besides, if the domain is competitive enough (with exact keywords you are targeting) to bring you visitors which converts, than I don't see any reason to worry about hyphens. The question regarding; visitors remembering a domain such as word1-word2word3.com, isn't that important because most of the traffic would be coming from search engines and when users converts within a site, they are clever enough to remember or at least bookmark it for another visit. Hope I am not missing anything.
Don't worry, there have been hypen'd domains which have had amazing success. Although I would say it is probably on the negative side, it is DEFINATELY not a game breaker. Good luck with it!
This will be no problem the search engines love keyword domain names, its how user friendly your domain name is that is the worry, if you band your self correctly you should have no worries
the only problem youll face is probably people seeing your domain as fishy because it doesnt follow a pattern and it looks odd. but the SEs probably wont think much of it. and if u get the enough quality backlinks youll end up ranking high regardless
yup - not a big deal. for a phrase i'm going after right now, the top result is a word-word-word.com domain. That said, i'd rather have a wordwordword.org, instead of a word-wordword.com. also, domains with hyphens don't sell as well as domains without hypens.
Thanks again everyone for your input. Sure wouldn't mind seeing a word-wordword.com domain with high SERPS results to make me feel better. Anyone know of any?