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Is it better to separate keywords with hyphens in a domain name?

by Julia Andersson
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a question for the more SEO savvy amongst us.

When I purchase brand new domains I tend to create keyword rich domains and separate individual keywords with hyphens for example home-made-crafts.com (not one of my domains)

What I would like to know is whether this helps to rank the site higher for the keyword 'home made crafts' over a site that has the domain homemadecrafts.com or are google and the other search engines able to recognize the keywords in both domains even though they may be strung together?

I've had good success using this format but have never tried not using the hyphens so I'm curious.

Julia
#domain #hyphens #keyword domain seo #keywords #separate
  • Profile picture of the author John Rowe
    If all other aspects of SEO are equal, then the name without the dashes will rank better.

    But dashed domains will do well, so when you can't get a name without the dashes, then the dashed version.
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    • Profile picture of the author Julia Andersson
      Originally Posted by John Rowe View Post

      If all other aspects of SEO are equal, then the name without the dashes will rank better.

      But dashed domains will do well, so when you can't get a name without the dashes, then the dashed version.
      Thanks John

      I'll concentrate less on separating my keywords in future I think. Though there are some cases where adding hyphens is probably necessary to avoid unfortunate parsing errors which may result in potentially embarrassing situations.
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      • Profile picture of the author John Rowe
        Originally Posted by Julia Andersson View Post

        Though there are some cases where adding hyphens is probably necessary to avoid unfortunate parsing errors which may result in potentially embarrassing situations.
        Oh, you mean like that website that sells pens.
        penisland.com
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        • Profile picture of the author Julia Andersson
          Originally Posted by John Rowe View Post

          Oh, you mean like that website that sells pens.
          penisland.com
          LOL, precisely! That's one instance where the hyphens would be necessary. Though that is probably an urban legend!
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  • Profile picture of the author Bruce Hearder
    Hi Julia,

    I think, from an SEO point of view, there is not a lot of difference between having dashes and not having dashes.

    The real big differences occurs if you ever try and sell or flip the website.

    You will generally find that a domain with NO dashes in it, will flip for a much higher price than one with dashes in it.

    So if I can get the domain without dashes, i buy that one, and if its not available then i go for the one with dashes.

    Try to keep the number of dashes donw to no more than 2, more than 2 seems to have a negative SEO imapct in the Search Engines..

    Hope this helps

    Bruce

    PS : Hope you are having a great Australia Day!
    Aussie Aussie Aussie!
    Oi! Oi! Oi!
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    • Profile picture of the author Julia Andersson
      Originally Posted by Bruce Hearder View Post

      Hi Julia,

      I think, from an SEO point of view, there is not a lot of difference between having dashes and not having dashes.

      The real big differences occurs if you ever try and sell or flip the website.

      PS : Hope you are having a great Australia Day!
      Aussie Aussie Aussie!
      Oi! Oi! Oi!
      Aussie Aussie Aussie - Oi! Oi! Oi! - Happy Australia day yourself

      I've never actually tried to flip a website but if I ever decide I want to I'll try to keep that in mind.

      As I said above, I think there are times when it may be necessary to add hyphens to ensure that search engines pick up the correct words, especially when more than one letter combination is available.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Adams
    The Domain has little if no impact on SEO. FOr example go to google and type "book", aside from googles own domain and Wikipedias' article on books, the top two results are Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. Both of which, on their own, have nothing to do with books. Your domain may stick out in the SERPS, thus getting a higher CTR, but you sites rank is based on content and links.
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    • Profile picture of the author Julia Andersson
      Originally Posted by BlackBookProject View Post

      The Domain has little if no impact on SEO. FOr example go to google and type "book", aside from googles own domain and Wikipedias' article on books, the top two results are Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. Both of which, on their own, have nothing to do with books. Your domain may stick out in the SERPS, thus getting a higher CTR, but you sites rank is based on content and links.
      I understand that SEO involves much more than just the domain name. The most important aspect of SEO is the number of backlinks to a site and what anchor text they use. I suspect that Amazon and Barnes Noble rank highly for the term books because hundreds of thousands of sites are linking to them and have the keyword 'book' in the anchor text.

      Did you hear about the prank against President George Bush in 2003... Hundreds (maybe even thousands) of people added a link to their sites pointing to his biography page with anchor text of miserable failure. The prank resulted in President Bush's biography page ranking #1 on Google for the keyword miserable failure. Apparently Google stepped in and killed it. Which is one of the results that you now see for that term. I notice they have now tried the same thing with Obama... with the same response from Google.

      I have a site where my subdomains rank higher than my root domain yet they have few or no backlinks... why? Because the URL is keyword rich and the content matches perfectly. So I understand that a keyword rich domain isn't entirely necessary but it certainly does help with newer sites that may not have many backlinks.
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    • Profile picture of the author Bruce Hearder
      Originally Posted by BlackBookProject View Post

      The Domain has little if no impact on SEO.
      Huh!!!

      Do you mind telling us why you believe this to be the case?
      Do you have evidence this is the case?
      Have you done testing that proves this is not the case?

      Hoping you can fill us in on the new info

      Bruce
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    • Profile picture of the author Easy Cash
      Originally Posted by BlackBookProject View Post

      The Domain has little if no impact on SEO. FOr example go to google and type "book", aside from googles own domain and Wikipedias' article on books, the top two results are Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. Both of which, on their own, have nothing to do with books. Your domain may stick out in the SERPS, thus getting a higher CTR, but you sites rank is based on content and links.
      This is true - but this is probably due to the popularity and size of the website.

      If you are in other markets or niches, the domain name makes a big difference.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by BlackBookProject View Post

      The Domain has little if no impact on SEO. FOr example go to google and type "book", aside from googles own domain and Wikipedias' article on books, the top two results are Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. Both of which, on their own, have nothing to do with books. Your domain may stick out in the SERPS, thus getting a higher CTR, but you sites rank is based on content and links.
      Hi BlackBookProject,

      I'm sorry I have to agree with Easy Cash, on this one. My test have shown that having the exact keyword as your domain name is one of the most significant factors in SEO.

      Your example, in fact. supports my thesis. If you were to have checked who owns "Book.com" you would have learned that it is Barnes & Noble. When you type Book.com into your browser's address bar, it takes you to the Barnes & Noble site.

      If you take a close look, you can find thousands of examples where simply having the exact keyword as a domain has allowed websites that have little promotional efforts to outrank many others in highly competitive keywords.

      That's not to say that you can't overwhelm this advantage given a heavy amount of promotional effort, it just saves you a lot of time and money when you have the exact keyword as a domain name.

      Another thing to consider is that having your exact keyword anywhere within the URL is also very effective.
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      • Profile picture of the author Bruce Hearder
        Hi have to agree here as well!

        I have found that having the right keyword in your domain makes a HUGE difference to your ranking postion in the search engines.

        So I has to respectfully disagree with poster that made a comment that domains carry not wieight.

        Take care

        Bruce
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      • Profile picture of the author Julia Andersson
        Originally Posted by dburk View Post

        I'm sorry I have to agree with Easy Cash, on this one. My test have shown that having the exact keyword as your domain name is one of the most significant factors in SEO.
        Absolutely, like I said, I have a site where my subdomains rank higher than my root domain with only one or two external links... all other links are internal from the root domain and other subdomains. The only possible explanation for this is on page SEO (including the keyword rich domain).
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  • Profile picture of the author Fender85
    Domain name carries more weight in older algorithms (like MSN). The reason it carries any weight in Google is just because of anchor text. A lot of the links you accrue across the web are "http://www.yoursite.com" kind of links, and so if your keyword is in the domain, it'll be in the anchor text when people link to you as your URL.

    As far as dashes versus no dashes, there is no discernible difference. And as previously mentioned, the "no dashes" generally carries a higher resell value. Now if you're looking at dashes versus underscores, use dashes. Google actually recognizes the underscore as a value (they have programming roots), which will screw your attempt at a SEO-friendly URL.
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