Best for SEO - exact domains with dashes or no spaces for keyword sentences??

[doyouwoo]

Hi. Just wondering what your feelings are on exact matches for keywords in domain names, in terms of whether google can distinguish "howtoputyourpantson.com" as "how to put your pants on", or in these cases if "how-to-put-your-pants-on.com" is better for SEO purposes? I am using a dumb example I know, it's just what came into my head first while typing.

Thanks,
Chris

[Alexa Smith]

Hi Chris,

Hyphenation doesn't affect SEO/rankings in any way.

There are about a hundred threads here discussing this question, and several of them contain a link to a little video of Google's Matt Cutts explaining this very clearly, succinctly and unambiguously, if you want to look for them.

But beware, because there are also some people who haven't seen it, who have once or twice (for whatever unrelated reasons) had difficulty ranking hyphenated domain-names and "therefore" imagine (though completely wrongly) otherwise. There are also people who believe (also completely wrongly) that "nobody knows for sure and it's a guessing game".

Of course, this doesn't address the different questions of whether owners of hyphenated domain-names can (a) lose type-in traffic to the owners of their unhyphenated equivalents, or (b) be disadvantaged in the event of a subsequent resale of the domain/site.

For some domain-names, one might think a hyphen would actually be quite an advantage: the owners of businesses like "Pen Island" and the "Mole Station Nursery" might share this perspective.

[JSProjects]

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that Google is starting to look down @ hyphenated domains and they're starting to flag many of them for manual reviews. I'll need to dig the article up. If I remember correctly, it was on one of the bigger SEO blogs.

However, I don't really think anyone knows FOR SURE.

[doyouwoo]

Thanks for the replies - so google won't necessarily think that my site is about some one-word topic called "howtoputyourpantson", and will correctly be able to assume that the site is about 'how to put your pants on'? I just wondered if Google would 'get' the subject better if I split up the keywords for it via dashes.
Lexy - still chuckling @ molestation nursery, haven't heard that one before!

[msu]

Aside from search engines, bear in mind that many users view excessively hyphenated domains as looking spammy and untrustworthy, meaning they'd be less inclined to click that link in search results.

[SlowlyMan]

Google will know what your site is about because you will populate it with good quality content and optimal keyword density and placement. That and the other typical on-page SEO any good site will have.

From my experience EMD has very little to do with your position in the SERPS.

I did an experiment with "EMD2012dotcom" It instantly went up to first position for the EMD keyword. But as other more established sites started adding new pages or subdomains targeting the same EMD, My site quickly dissolved to oblivion.

I started an aggressive on page and off-page SEO campaign. Now the page is sitting at position 3 -5

Another thing to consider is unless your EMD has a ton of traffic, you will be relying on long tail searches for a lot of your traffic. That will come from good SEO.

At the other end of the spectrum, I have another site "johnnysdancingbear entertainmentdotcom" In the first few weeks google was sending People to the site looking for dancing shoes, dancing lessons, etc.

Google obviously decided my site was about dancing, but as my on-page content started to grow, traffic started to come from the keywords in my on-page content.

Hope I didn't ramble too much.

[doyouwoo]

Originally Posted by SlowlyMan

Hope I didn't ramble too much.

You rambled just enough Thanks for the insights, makes a lot of sense!

[GeorgR.]

Alexa got it right, you can also easily test this yourself: Search on google for a multi word like "acne treatment" and you will see how Google puts acnetreatment in URLs in bold. You don't need hyphens because Google can read this and sees the two words.