hey, i read that its much better to name a domain without any hypens (the - sign). my first question is, when choosing a domain, i will try to include 1-2 of the words that i want to be my main ones in the site seo, right? i will prefer to not use the hypens, but what happens when there are 3-5 and more words in the domain? as a rule never use hypens in domain name? and what are the number of maximum words or letters a domain name should have? my second question is about the file names. i see alot of seo sites, using a-b-c instead of abc for internal files names. why is that? is it preferable in the case of internal files? so there is a difference between domain and files name in that case? o ab.html file and a-b.html file are the same seo wise? edit: i have another very important question. i intend of making an affiliate site in english. now, i guess the audience would mostly be from us, but i live in israel. whats the best thing for me? to find a us hosting service? or to stick by my country hosting services? does it mean much to the search engines? thanks.
Hi Richee, I wouldn't worry too much about the website address itself. In itself it's not going to get you big traffic. It's the content that you add to the site that matters. The search engines can "see" the separate words in the domain name. So it can understand makemoneyonline.com just as well as make-money-online.com. Don't use underscores, but hyphens are ok. On subpages people often use hyphens. Dubious as to what difference this might make, but my impression is that hyphens help to tell the search engines that the words are important together. ie, they are not just separate words but are a keyword phrase together. Hyphens are essential in some cases. Imagine if "Pen island" or "Who Represents" did not have hyphens in their domain name! ))) Cheers, Sam
its not much of a big issue but having hyphens can give you an advantage on some of your competitors when it comes to ranking.
My suggestions: 1) Avoid hyphens and stick with .com for the domain names. 2) ALWAYS using hyphens as a word separator in page and folder names (/this-is-a-folder/this-is-a-page.html) and always avoid using underscores or just cramming the words together (i.e. /this_is_a_folder/this_is_a_page.html and /thisisafolder/thisisapage.html are BOTH less desireable than /this-is-a-folder/this-is-a-page.html). References: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3SFVfDIS5k http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329&hl=en http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
I would agree with Canonical. There is strong evidence that Google began devaluing hyphenated domains 1 1/2 - 2 years ago. Avoid them when possible. Underscores are problematic mainly because they disappear in a link - http://www.example.com/a_linked_page/. I think it is preferable, when possible, to avoid hyphens as well, but not by running words together. Good file structure will go a long ways towards the long-url-because-it-helps-seo.htm type of file structures. Instead, I would recommend something like www.example.com/design/structure/seo/urls.htm That said, sometimes hyphens are needed, and "cool URIs do not change". Running words together should be avoided due to ambiguity - both for users and the SE's.