Quick noob question before I buy a domain. Lets say the domain name businessenvelopes.com was taken would it still be effective to buy the domain business-envelopes.com Or should I buy a .net .org domain instead such as businessenvelopes.org My keywords here would be trying to achieve business envelopes, and I know the domain plays a role in SEO. So which way would be the way to go in this? Thanks
Most people say that Google doesn't care about the domain extension, but if you look at the top 10 results for the most important keywords there are 99% dot coms. So my suggestion will be to buy the dot com.
Thanks for your reply, I will go with the .com And now for the question, of deciding to use a "-" in the domain name, will that effective my domain good or bad... such as using www.business-envelopes.com
Dot.com = beach front property Dot.net = Kansas Always, dot.com, unless absolutely necessary, and NO dash (-) Add another related keyword like below or, keep searching. www.specialtybusinessenvelopes.com ?
Domain extensions play no role in search engine rankings, only cc-TLDs tend to rank better in their respected geo-graphical area. You'll hear people go on and on about "but, 90% of the search results are *.com", but fail to realize that *.com is one of the oldest domain extensions available on the internet. *.gov, *.edu, etc have no special value as well.
For SEO purposes there is no difference between .com and dashes or no dashes. But for general business purposes you should use a .com with your keywords and without the dashes. Your site has the perception of being more serious if it doesn't have a dash and has a .com extension...and perception is everything in marketing and branding. You want the keywords in your domain name because many people will link back to your site with the anchor text set to the words in your domain name.