dash in domain or no dash?

for seo purposes, do you think that it's better to have
keyword-phrase.com or keywordphrase.com ?

 

I believe it depends on the phrase, making it a generic "keywordphrase.com" it's hard to determine it.

Most people try to avoid the dash in domain names but from SEO perspective it may be beneficial.

 

In the past i've been against it, but if its a very competitive term it seems to work in seo terms, ie search 'free game' on google. Several results in top 10 with dashs.

However with regards to people typing in the domain, its better to not have the dash.

 

I have one site in wich i did just a little seo, but if you search in google for "guida adsense" (adsense guide in italian) it is first, no dashes on the domain name.
But actually i don't think there are many competitors with dashes, it's pretty unpopular, and i really hate to have to type them in.
I prefer keywordphrase.com

 

For seo purposes it's better to have a domain with dash. (search google about it)

But again, for commercial purposes, it's better to have domain without dashes... (it looks better) imho!

 

I have one domain with a dash, as otherwise it looks like different words, and its doing well. The problem comes when someone tries to type in the url and they always forget to add the dash and can't find the site.

 

Makes no difference as the - is considered a space.

 

dashes are considered better for seo, but no dashes are usually easier to remember for visitors (especially when they tell others by word of mouth) if in doubt slpash out an extra $9 and buy both

 

There is no doubt that keywordphrase.com looks and sounds better then keyword-phrase.com. And if you are worried about SEO then just put keyword phrase as seperate words in your title, that should solve that little problem. And in any case google is smart enough to find words that are part of bigger words for example when i search for my blog with all the words seperated as workout 4 bloggers google still gives it as the first result on first page, and the best part is that my blog is pretty new. So I suggest you go with keywordphrase.com

 

Been watching the auctions and I am shocked what they are now getting for domains with dashes in them

I just bought 2 more today

 

I have been research this for a while and have come to the following conclusion: dashes for filenames, but not more than one dash for domain names. This thread: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/ has a couple examples that suggest that two or more dashes in a URL may in fact be harmful in terms of SEO. I have no idea if this is true but in general I notice more highly ranked single word domain names, so I am actually switching my hyphenated name back to non-hyphenated.

In terms of marketing the domain my previous solution was to have business card and email with no hyphens, and have the non-hyphenated version redirect to the hyphenated version, which I had hyphenated for SEO. Again, in most cases you're probably okay with a dash in the domain name, but from what I've learned recently I wouldn't recommend filling the URL with dashes.

The one exception is the classic bikesexpo.com - here you would want to use the hyphen (bikes-expo.com) to prevent the search engines from seeing bike-sex-po.com.

Cheers,
Alex
http://www.ContractWebDevelopment.com

 

I hope not. I just bought 1 with 3 dashes yesterday.

 

What about losangeles-widgets.com? And losangeleswidgets.com, net, us, org,....etc, are all taken? Is the name as good as the ones with dashes?

 

i would register both domains if available. For instance, digitalpoint.com & digital-point.com

 

Given the choice, take a brandable name over anything else.

What does the name sound like over a telephone? "No, that's en-why-hyphen-double you - eye - dee - gee- eeh - tee - ess - hyphen - four (the number, not 'eff - oh - are') - hyphen - you - dot - com. Don't forget the hyphen! No, that is the letter 'u' at the end, not 'why - oh - you'. did you spell out 'four' or use the numeral? Try it again with the numeral. OK, try again - en-why-hyphen-double you - eye - dee - gee- eeh - tee - ess - hyphen - four (the numeral - 4!) - hyphen - you (the letter 'u', remember?) - dot - com. Don't forget the hyphen!"

Is ny-widgets-4-u.com a good domain? I don't think soooo...

Brandable domains are still out there. I have registered names such as highspice.com, fiberguild.com, siteflo.com, sojaa.org, afcna.com, iaoshow.com, etc.

Find one of those and do the work necessary to make it rank. The site will be much stronger for it. Model yourself off of sites like amazon, ebay, etc.

Hyphenated domains are often disposable domains IMHO. (Of course, there is a use for disposable domains from time to time...)

 

I would avoid the dash. Dash in page file names are good, but for type'ins, it's bad in the actual domain.

 

Good thread I often wondered about the dash or no dash theory.

 

For SEO purposes definately keyword1-keyword2.com but keep it to one or two hyphens for the domain.

The reason for this is simple. Google indexes on keywords in hyphenated urls but not on keywords in underscored or conjoined urls.

Of course sometimes SEO considerations will be outweighed by branding issues in which case hyphens are to be avoided.

- Michael

 

I do agree on this regard..
But still if the off page factors are really good enough, dash or no dash doesn't matter at all.

 

I read some where that using dashes disrupts Google and those trying to memorize the domain""