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Domains - Hyphens or no hyphens?

by Voyager64
25 replies
Hi there,

Thanks for reading this.

I am looking at exact keyword domain names but some of them I cannot get without putting in hyphens. My experience tells me that hyphenated domains do not do as well in the SE results.

So...

Can anyone shed any light (through experience) whether it harms your domain if you add online or site at the end of the domain e.g exactkeywordonline(dot)co(dot)uk

I have heard that you should not add a word at the beginning e.g myexactkeyword(dot)co(dot)uk

I would love to hear your thoughts

Thanks in advance

Jon
#domains #hyphens
  • Profile picture of the author Kudosman
    Yeah l like to know the answer to that one
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    • Profile picture of the author Michael Ten
      i own about 7 or 8 domain names. one is hyphenated.

      i probably won't get any more hyphenated domains.
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      • Profile picture of the author redhalls7
        Hi,

        It does not matter from SEO point of view whether it's with hypen or not, or whether it has a word like my in front or back or any other combination etc etc. What you just should not do is register company or brand name domains, like nike.com or very similar variations of them... because then your domain can get banned from the search engines.

        Apart from SEO point of view, then it's about your customers, domains with hypens are not very good (because they're difficult to write, difficult to remember), and if you put "useless" words it's also not suggested, like my, the, etc... keep it short to be easy to remember and catchy without any difficult words hard to type.

        When buying a domain you should take notice of both: search engines and your customers.

        Karl
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Voyager64 View Post

    My experience tells me that hyphenated domains do not do as well in the SE results.
    Your experience is misleading you there, Jon. Hyphens make no difference at all to SEO.

    There may be an issue, with hyphenated domains, of loss of traffic to the owner of the unhyphenated version; but there's no SEO issue at all.
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    • Profile picture of the author tpw
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      Your experience is misleading you there, Jon. Hyphens make no difference at all to SEO.

      There may be an issue, with hyphenated domains, of loss of traffic to the owner of the unhyphenated version; but there's no SEO issue at all.

      I am with Alexa here.

      There is no plus or minus to the hyphen in SEO.

      The only issue is whether you anticipate people remembering your domain name and typing it into their browser manually.

      If people are typing your domain name manually, the majority will forget to add the hyphen, just as many will forget that you are a dot net instead of a dot com.
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  • Profile picture of the author RachelCorrine
    I agree - there are so many domain names...the real ticket is not so much using a keyword, but creating something easy for people to remember. Twitter isn't a keyword at all...at least it didn't start that way. It was just a name!
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  • Profile picture of the author simplebutcreative
    Originally Posted by Voyager64 View Post

    Hi there,

    Thanks for reading this.

    I am looking at exact keyword domain names but some of them I cannot get without putting in hyphens. My experience tells me that hyphenated domains do not do as well in the SE results.

    So...

    Can anyone shed any light (through experience) whether it harms your domain if you add online or site at the end of the domain e.g exactkeywordonline(dot)co(dot)uk

    I have heard that you should not add a word at the beginning e.g myexactkeyword(dot)co(dot)uk

    I would love to hear your thoughts

    Thanks in advance

    Jon
    Yes try to avoid hyphens if possible...
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    • Profile picture of the author gekko2.0
      We have websites with and without hyphens and have never noticed any difference between the two when it came to seo
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  • Profile picture of the author CaesarSEO
    I'd definitely go for a no-hyphen, even if it means to add an extra keyword to the domain name. It just doesn't look original with an hyphen. Also I think that if two sites were identically optimized then ...w.site.com will appear on top of ..w.s-i-t-e.com on google I believe, correct me if I'm wrong. But I mean, s-i-t-e just doesn't like good to me and I'm sure many other people feel the same way.
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    • Profile picture of the author donhx
      It does depend on the purpose of the site. Hyphenated is fine for SEO, not so good if you want people to remember your site name to visit and share with others. Most people would tend to visit the one without the hyphen. People often forget about hyphens and go to the "wrong" site.

      Same goes for URLs that can be singular and plural. It's also problematic with names that ordinarily have an apostrophe in them. Clarity is always an asset.
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      • Profile picture of the author Voyager64
        Thanks to all for replying.

        Regarding the hyphens - I have 15 affiliate sites all of which I have done the same to in terms of SEO and backlinking, and ALL 7 that are hyphenated are way down the SE results compared to the 8 which aren't (5 of which are on Page 1).

        Thanks for the info re: extra words. I am planning on adding online or site after the keyword in the domain.
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  • Profile picture of the author Apollo-Articles
    The only issue with hyphens is that they massivly devalue the price of the domain name.

    For example onlinecasino.com and online-casino.com, the first will be worth way more.

    Hope that helps,


    Sam

    Apollo Articles
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  • Profile picture of the author Leslie B
    I have two or three sites with hyphens, all of them are on page 1 for their main keyword, one of them is even ranking number 1. It all depends on how you optimize them further, in my opinion.

    When you're selling a site though, it might lessen the value if you have a hyphen, but if you can prove enough income, I wouldn't lay awake too much about that either.

    Leslie
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  • Profile picture of the author Johnny12345
    Hyphens probably make no difference for SEO purposes (as long as there aren't too many of them).

    The real question is where you expect your traffic to come from: SEO or typed-in/word-of-mouth.

    For word-of-mouth traffic, it's very cumbersome to say a hyphenated name -- just try it. Which would be easier for someone to understand and remember -- WarriorForum.com or Warrior-Forum.com?

    For SEO traffic, it doesn't really matter. It's just as easy to click on either link.

    However, an advantage to hyphens is that they can help clarify the name of the site. As far as I know, a famous, big-name marketer owns the domain penisland.com.

    A hyphen would make it more clear... pen-island.com. Without the hyphen, the name becomes an adult theme park.

    Most of the time, a name without hyphens is best -- and is most valuable. But there are exceptions...

    John
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    • Profile picture of the author KingArthur
      For key word: "photos of african pink elephants"

      Let us say that the domain without dashes is gone for .net, .com, and
      .org and there are no searches in google for the keyword "best photos of african pink
      elephants".

      would you select www.photosof-africanpinkelephants.com

      or

      www.bestphotosofafricanpinkelephants.com ( remember there are no exact
      searches for this but it does contain the key word I want a domain name
      for but has extra word "best" in it which sounds good for advertising
      and branding but is not important for affiliate sites)

      Does google discriminate against domains with just one dash in them and
      does google tend to prefer domains without dashes in them so that the second choice would
      be better?

      Is it also better to have the keyword density to the maximum which would
      make the keyword with only one dash better than the key word which includes the word
      "best".

      If you were going to select one of the domains above, which one would
      you choose? #1 or #2 ?

      Short answer about why you would make your choice would help also.
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      • Profile picture of the author bgmacaw
        Originally Posted by KingArthur View Post

        Does google discriminate against domains with just one dash in them and
        does google tend to prefer domains without dashes in them so that the second choice would
        be better?
        What matters to Google primarily are the number and quality of the links pointing to the site.

        For a 'real world' example, let's go Google on the highly competitive term 'bad credit loans'. In the top 10, provided your search results are close to mine, you'll see the following:

        bestleadinglenders.com
        badcreditalliance.com
        snappymoney.com
        badcreditresources.com
        personalloansmania.com
        loans-to-go.com
        completeloansource.com/bad-credit-personal-loans
        badcreditloanservices.com
        badcreditunsecuredpersonalloans.com
        directlendingsolutions.com

        No exact match, 3 with no matching words at all (including the one in the #1 spot) and 1 with 2, count 'em, 2 hyphens. Dig into their backlinks, see what they're doing. You might find it interesting and educational.
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        • Profile picture of the author Jeff Henshaw
          However, an advantage to hyphens is that they can help clarify the name of the site.
          I agree - and although not relevant to the question in the op (as I don't know the answer) ...

          If I have a keyword relevant domain name, which to the human eye is not easy to read, then I will create and register a hyphenated version too. Horses for courses!

          Just my thoughts,

          Jeff.
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  • Profile picture of the author adambr
    Banned
    I would recommend hyphens because the search engine see's the hyphens just like a space: example: real-estate, he see's -> real estate.
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    • Profile picture of the author Derek S
      I have tested this a few times now and nearly every domain with the hyphen did not rank nearly as quickly as the same domain without the hyphen.

      I also found that the domain with the hyphen was more prone to fluctuate in rankings even after constant back links and aged domain.

      If you MUST buy a domain with a hyphen I would not use more that one hyphen. Most sites I had with two or more seemed nearly 3X harder to rank.

      I get better results with having my main keyword in the domain and adding an extra word to the end of the keyword. Such as if my keyword was golf swing and that domain was taken I would get www.golfswing .com instead.

      However multiple hyphens after the root domain make no difference what so ever like : www.golfswingpro .com/golf-swing-help.html

      All the best,

      Derek
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      • Profile picture of the author rileyb
        they will rank, how fast depends on how much competition.

        whats-hot-weekly.com ranks for whats hot weekly (my cool site) but I dont even know how much competition it has.
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  • Profile picture of the author Steadyon
    If "www.weight-loss.com" was available, would you be concerned about a hyphen?
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  • Profile picture of the author TZ
    Go short and no dashes.

    Here is a tip OK.

    MAKE UP YOUR OWN WORD.

    Like Verizon, Buzzle, Zazzle ..... whatever. Make it short.

    Google loves that.

    Contrary to popular belief, you DO NOT need keywords in the domain.

    If you are serious about growing the domain, the content will guide all the traffic you need to seriously profit.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brinks
    As Alexa mentioned, there is no difference in terms of SEO.

    However, that does not mean hyphenated names are on the same level. While many reasons have been touched on, my biggest beef against them is that I find them to be unprofessional.
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  • Profile picture of the author Underground SEO
    This is quite a well documented issue on previous threads. One thing I will say though is that we need to stop with the "it makes no difference to seo" - in your opinion it makes no difference to seo but there are no facts siding with either view of the argument.
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