I think that domains with hypens are not all that better than normal domains with the same keywords, because Google can now see if part of a url is a keyword, regardless of whether it's hyphenated or not. Hyphenated domains often look spammy (well, not always) and are harder to memorize. So, I think I'll pass. What do you guys think?
Google "highlights" non-delimited portions of words, but Google does not index non-delimited portions of words. Hyphens are definitely your best bet for SEO.
I am in agreement with will, although G identifies a portion, it does not read it as a word. How do I know? made up word, got site spidered and indexed, did a search for part of made up word, site did not show up. Added another made up word on the page, got site indexed, did search for first made up word and part of second made up word that was in the domain, it highlighted the part word. again did a search for the part word, no results. This proves that it does not return it in the results although it identifies it.
I personally would NEVER buy anything from a hyphenated domain website... So, it "may" help your SEO a little (may!), but it may also NOT be that great for sales Don't be a spammy "also ran." Good luck, Mike
If the domains available I usually go for both and setup a 301 redirect from the non hyphenated to the hyphenated domain for type-in and word of mouth traffic. It also helps with spam to setup your email account for the non hyphenated domain (domain that doesn't rank at all).
I cant say I have seen a great deal of difference, I have hyphenated and non-hyphenated sites ranked well.
You may be limiting yourself with that approach. My sites that keywords doamins with hyphen are ranked very high and sales are great and I spend no $ on advertising other than submitting my sites to paid directories. Domain name itself does play a big roll in Yahoo and MSN ranking. I like short hyphen keyword domains names. you get the added benefit from having keyword in domain and natural anchor text in your BL's. Google sees the hyphen as a space and giving your link a natrual anchor text.
The summation seems easy enough: it seems unlikely to hurt anything (sorry, i fear maxweb is a in a small minority here), and is very likely to help. Those who say that G cannot, in fact, peel out words in a nonhyphenated domain have experimental evidence on their side (more even than mentioned so far), so there should simply be no question.
I've played with both at different times and would have to say I see no noticable difference in visitor behaviour. I do have the domain name www.cross-stitch-pattern.com and place nowhere in google for cross stitch pattern, while I do place for cross-stitch-pattern (which confused me since I went with this name based on advice that google treated the hyphen as a space) I tend these days to use a hyphen if it is grammatically intuitive to do so, such as my www.trance-formation.co.uk as the domain name itself has no SEO function)
But I would use hyphenated sub-folder names, "sub" and "folder" are treated as seperate words by most SE's.
Look spammy to who? Most surfers look at the title and description to decide if they are going to click on a link, and probably never even notice the URL. Those of us involved in web development, seo, whatever, tend to take more notice of the URL and consider it more than a casual surfer would do.
Google absolutely does treat the hyphen as a space, there is no gain in the eyes of google in having a keyword rich domain, but the real gains com in the fact that when people link to the site www.cross-stich-patterns.com they are giving you the absolute maximum benefit of keyword rich anchor text. Directories will use the name of the site as anchor, the list is endless. Does having a keyword rich domain name benefit you apart from link anchor? Probably not, other than if it is memorable also. Does having a keyword rich domain help you? Absolutely as you get the max link anchor. OWG
All very interesting points, I guess my "feelings" with respect to hyphenated domains come from: My suspicion that one registers a hyphenated domain because the non-hyphenated version is GONE? And hence, I hate being second-best So, if someone has beaten me to the non-hyphenated version, than I will "out think" them on another idea, concept or domain... Just being stubborn I guess. Thanks for shedding a little more light on hyphenated-domain-names.com TOTALLY AGREE with the point most surfers/customers don't even recognize URLs. Interesting. Mike
Well, best-satellite-tv-free-now.com does look spammy. I automatically disregard such results in the SERPS. A two word hyphenated domain would look OK though.
Certainly. I would also disregard bestsatellitetvfreenow.com I like my urls to have a certain intuitive flow about them. Take www.crossstitchpattern.com... 3 s's in a row... how often do you think that is likely to get misspelt? arguably, www.cross-stitchpattern.com might have worked
If you look at Webmaster-Link-Exchange.com Ranked very high in SERP for those keywords. I'm not depending on type in traffic but SE traffic for the site. My SEO-Forums.com has only been online for about a month and it has already started to rising in SERPs for "SEO Forums" and getting traffic from searches for "SEO Forums" Another example would be Text-Ads.com very new site but again targeting SERP traffic and I would expect much same results. I agree that too many hyphens will take away from the domain name branding and does deter from SERP ranking to some bit but limited use of hyphens with descriptive keywords in the name can be very effective.
It's unclear, to me, at least, how, say, vegetable-gardening.com "takes away from domain-name branding" as compared to vegetablegardening.com (both real sites, neither mine, the two apparently distinct), and I am really puzzled at how one form compared to the other can "deter from SERP ranking", except, perhaps, by being harder for potential visitors to remember and type in. As has been aptly pointed out, a long, trashy, keyword-stuffed domain name is going to be bad mojo with or without hyphens. But in shorter, more realistic and plausible cases--like the one I mentioned above--I think that hyphenation makes it much easier for potential and return visitors, and I know that it makes it possible for Google to see the keywords. As I have said before, how can you go wrong by hyphenating?
Seeing both those sites listed in the SERP results, I'm sure that I would recognise the individual words in vegetable-gardening.com more easily, and tend to click on that one first. With vegetablegardening.com your brain has to scan the phrase and determine the break between the words. For example, someone might scan vegetablegardening.com and notice table gardening before they notice vegetablegardening.com With the hyphenated version, you've already done the analysis work for them and directed them to the correct phrase. When I first started, I always used non-hyphenated words, because I thought it looked more professional. Now, I'm sure that Google can spot the individual words more easily in a hyphenated URL, and I'm also sure the viewer can spot the individual words more easily, so I now tend to use hyphens in all my new domains.