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4 word url - better with or without hyphens?

by tantris99
9 replies
I need to get a url for my new site. All good three word urls for my main keyword phrase are unavailable so I need to take a 4 word one. Would a url with 3 hyphens work better in SEO terms than 4 words together.

teachpaintingoverseasguide.com or teach-painting-overseas-guide.com

I'd be grateful for any advice.
#hyphens #url #word
  • Profile picture of the author Kannu
    For multiple words URLs, it is better to have hyphen between them. Search Engines does not have any problem or advantage by the use of hyphen. It does not heart SEO. However, for human readability it is better to have hyphens.
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  • Profile picture of the author Thinker1
    My experience is that words without hyphens get indexed very quickly plus come up on the first page of Google for their keywords much faster than urls with hyphens. I had experminted this with more than 4 urls. I stay away from hyphens by any means. With regard to the confusion, as long as your header gives the exact name of your site, that would be a problem.
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  • Profile picture of the author m100k
    You are much better off at getting a domain name without hyphens from a prospective customers view. Your customer might have a hard time remember where all the hyphen goes in your domain name when they enter it in the address bar.

    You can still rank with hyphens depending on the competition level, but if you are going for branding you should get a domain without hyphens.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rich Struck
    Back in the old days names with hyphens seemed to almost be favored by Google. Now I don't think it makes any difference.

    With that out of the way, I think you would be better off to keep trying to find something shorter. I know its not easy but the shorter your domain is, the easier it is for people to both remember and to type.
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  • Profile picture of the author JTor
    It doesn't make any difference as long as the meaning of the url is the same with our without hyphens.
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    John Torquato - http://www.johntorquato.com
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    • Profile picture of the author Meharis
      Google can do everything including differentiating words without hyphens.
      People wont enter keywords with hyphens; period.
      The advantage of using hyphens is you may get better domains with hyphens and redirect them to the not so good domain name. Follow me:
      Let say you want high ranking Cheapdomains.com and is taken plus all other related keywords.
      You could purchase Cheap-Domains.com and redirect it to Cheapdomainslist.com.
      You will be getting traffic from Cheapdomainslist and Cheap-domains.com
      You should get domains with hyphens to avoid competence.

      Cheers,
      Meharis
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      • Profile picture of the author schabotte
        Search engines are now smart enough to break apart a domain name's keywords without hyphens. Perhaps that wasn't true early on but it is definitely true now.

        The question of hyphens and really the choice of words in a domain name depends on one simple question

        Do you expect the reader to be typing the domain name into the browser repeatedly?

        Consider these things.

        Is the visitor likely to bookmark the site?

        Is the visitor visiting based on email marketing to them?

        Is the visitor going to your site because of finding it multiple times on the web due to other searches?

        Or is there a condition where you feel the visitor would be typing in the url multiple times for some reason (and be clearing the browser cache after every session so the history tab doesn't help in a type in situation?)

        I don't know about others but I will bookmark a place I'm likely to visit again. And I keep my history for around three weeks so I can root around in it in case I didn't bookmark something and then later thought it was important.

        ---

        Now a bit more on names. There are some other things you can look at.

        For instance, in your communications with others, you can capitalize the words to make them stand out MyFavoriteWebsite.com

        It allows the people to see the actual words more easily.

        And on the flip side, things that can confuse are plural/singular issues and last letter of one word being the same as the first letter of the next word.

        For instance

        MarketingInsiderWorkshop.com vs MarketingInsidersWorkshop.com
        (Will the visitor catch the singular vs plural?)

        or

        SalesSuccessSecrets.com

        will the customer drop an S somewhere in typing it in?

        Just some things to consider if you believe type in traffic is going to be important to your efforts.
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