I'm not sure how much it would help or hurt, but I'd check out the pages that you are competing against...do those have the dashes or not?

I don't think it will hurt your rankings at all...but it won't be easy for customers to remember. If you're designing a site for search traffic only and are not concerned about repeat visitors (Example: made for adsense sites) then it won't matter.

If you want to have a URL that is easy to remember and easy for your visitors to refer people, stay away from the dash.

You get one dash no problem but more than that and you will have some trouble with organic rankings.

It is openly recognised by Google that dashes are equivalent to spaces to bots. Just look at this thread's URL in your browser if you want an example.

For - Can be easier to pick up these days; not that critical as people actually don't remember domain names. If you say to someone you know at work xyz.com is a great site, then they will forget the URL in 20 minutes.

Con - can look spammy; if you tell a user you have my domain dot com they will go to mydomain.com and not my-domain.com;

I always ask myself can I easily tell someone about my domain name. If I ended up on a podcast or something and I had to audibly tell people my domain name, will it be difficult?

I think dashes and the like won't hurt rankings, but it will be difficult to tell others about your website. Now depending on the purpose of the site, that may not be a big deal, but if you want to create a site that you plan on investing a significant amount of time in...I would suggest not using the dashes...

My understanding is that dashes make no difference to how the site ranks because the search engines can still identify the keywords as they don't recognise dashes. As for it being difficult to give a site name verbally to someone with dashes in, I can't ever really see that happening as you generally provide a link to your site and often cloak it anyway.

No; it doesn't. Not for SEO purposes, anyway.

(By the way, it's not a "dash". It's actually a "hyphen": they're two different punctuation marks).

But what can hurt your business is using a hyphenated domain-name of which someone else owns the unhyphenated version, because at some point you'll lose some traffic to them.

It's honestly as simple as that.

I am not sure whether it will help you or not but I am sure it can not hurt you. However have you checked your desire domain names with the combination of singular and plural? May be that way u get some good quality domain..

I see it like this.

It is not going to hurt or help you in any shape of form so you are safe to do that.

Tal

Yes!It 100% harts google ranking ad SEO.because it make google crawlers somewhat puzzled about your website.Consider"." in your website.

Yes, it helps the search engines pick up the keywords in the domain. It's a good idea, EXCEPT THAT people do not trust, nor want to buy from a -dash- domain name. So unless you are redirecting to a non-dash domain for the sale, I would expect a lot of buyer uncertainty about the validity/professionalism of your domain, and therefore... your product.

Personally, I have popped for a couple-hundred dollar Sedo domains if they were exactly what I wanted. As much as I abhor domain squatters, I will pay for a keyword flush, .com domain, if the price is right.

Ansel

I agree with many posts. Personally, I've had a couple of dashed domain names, and as far as ranking..no problems there at all. However, like most have said, they're not the most "people friendly." If I was using the words for SEO---then go for it. If I was building a brand, I would search for a 2-word domain w/ out dash & focus most of my optimizing efforts on the actual content of the website. Domains w/ relevant keywords do give you some organic pull, but it's only one small part of optimizing for the web. There's a lot of other areas you can focus on for ranking. My 2 cents. Good luck!

Also, if you ever planned on selling your domain at some point, that hyphen is going to downgrade its value considerably even with great keywords in the domain. My suggestion is to use the words for article marketing efforts...but for brand-building---run away..fast.

I was wondering that once myself, so i talked to one of the domain guys on godaddy. He told me that it really doesn't help or hurt just makes the domain name longer. Something to consider as i ran an adwords campaign that they would not approve because the domain was too long!

You domain will be great if you don't place dash..Something special characters on the domain seems so disturbing for the search engine. So might as well look or think of a domain name without dash.

Domain name would look better without dashes, imo

Domains without dashes have a higher priority

I don't think having a dash hurts the domain name. But of course it would be hard to remember and people could easily go to nichesite.com instead of niche-site.com so that way you could lose visitors/customers

But if you are confident of getting good rankings then you can go for a domain with a dash. You can also see if you can get a domain name with your keyword in the beginning without dashes

example

nichereport
nichescam
nichereview
nichestore
nicheoutlet

etc.

Regards,
Anup

Well, imagine if it had been pen-island.com instead of penisland.com

Of course, nothing could save therapist.com...

Or how about polish-it.com?

If your main keywords are in the domain but separated by hyphens, it should not make any difference in the ranking. The only difference is how people may perceive your domain; the general consensus is that long domain names with many hyphens in between are considered disreputable.

Hi!!

Google will still crawl through your website if it has dashes in the domain. All that matter is the correct optimization of your site.

You need to name your site correctly as Google Checks perfect keywords used in the title of the site. Never the less, the contents in the site should be your first priority rather than making it on top of search engines.

You can also google the term "GOOGLE SEO" and download the ebook titled :" Search Engines Optimization Starter's Guide"

This Ebook is the official release of Google.

Bye. Best of luck for your website.

One dash in a domain name: No harm in rankings, low resale value if you just sell the domain name later.

More than one dash in a domain name: Spam. 0 resale value.

I had one such domain which is up for sale on Sedo for years, but it won't sale because of the -, however it ranked #1 on Google consistently at one time for the words - html encrypter (low competition), domain being html-encrypter.com

IMHO, one dash does not harm rankings. And, moreover we do not remember domain names, 90% time we click on a link.

@LogoNerds. You have the point there, It doesn't matter if the domain has - or not the dependability of the page will be on the high quality of the content, Guest more likely visits user-friendly sites and easy to familiarize. Hope this helps for the thread.

no matter, with dash or without dash if your domain is keyword rich then it will be on higher priority for SE.

It doesn't affect your rankings. However, if your targeting a buyer keyword don't use them. They look foolish. lol.