Hello, This is a question about hyphens in between a word in a domain. Suppose I wanted to buy the domain revitalize.com but it was not available. But re-vitalize.com was available. My question is that if I take the re-vitalize.com domain then for SEO will the hyphen make a difference to my search engine rankings. Does the hyphen act as a word separator (does google recognize it as such). Or does it not make too much of a difference. Thanks for your help. regards Nikhil
In my experience, Google will disregard the "-" in things like titles, content and meta tags. So if you have "Re-try" in the title or meta description Google will see "re try." Doesn't hurt, doesn't help. Domains may be different. Domains are just string(s) pointing to an IP address. I wouldn't make a site's domain name be r-e-v-i-t-a-l-i-z-e.com, i don't think re-vitalize.com is too bad. I should say, to me, that domain looks spammy.
I agree with beerSEO. URL's with dashes in them are not seen too often, and in my experience look spammy. While the availability of short domain names is much less than it was, there are still many available. I would look for an alternate.
i personally do not prefer a - in the domain names, but it should not prove to be detrimental ... the SE will treat it as a space/word seperator.
I suggest you not to buy re-vitalize.com. As you are interested to take domain name like revitalize.com, add anything after the domain name. Like revitalizeclinic.com, revitalizecafe.com etc. On this way search engine rank your domain with your particular keyword.
use hyphenated domain names is when two words joined together like in a domain name could imply or even state a different meaning or unintentional phrases. The following is an example: <http://www.basketballshopping.com/> www.basketballshopping.com could be read as basketball shopping or basketballs hopping, two completely different thoughts and contexts. Avoid confusing phrases altogether or use hyphens to separate the words.