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Partially-Hyphenated EMD's

by erea77
18 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a quick question that I've been thinking about lately.

I know that its argued whether or not EMD's provide SEO value, but let's just assume that it does for a second.

I've read that hyphenated EMD's like "red-shoe-laces.com" perform pretty close to equal compared to EMD's without hyphenation like "redshoelaces.com"

My question is, would the EMD lose any value if it were instead "red-shoelaces.com"?

Let me know if you have any insight on this. I'm very curious.

Thanks!
#emd #partiallyhyphenated
  • Profile picture of the author Francois du_Toit
    I have often seen partially-hyphenated EMD's rank well for competitive keywords.

    I have not tested this myself but I believe it will work just fine. It may look a bit strange but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference, if any, as far as SEO is concerned.
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    • Profile picture of the author erea77
      Originally Posted by Francois du_Toit View Post

      I have often seen partially-hyphenated EMD's rank well for competitive keywords.

      I have not tested this myself but I believe it will work just fine. It may look a bit strange but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference, if any, as far as SEO is concerned.
      OK Thanks a ton. So if you were in my situation, and the competition was the same for the keywords, which would you go for:

      - A partially hyphenated EMD with 1600 exact matches
      - A fully hyphenated EMD with 720 exact matches
      - A non-hyphenated EMD with 480 exact matches

      Thanks
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      • Profile picture of the author Francois du_Toit
        Originally Posted by erea77 View Post

        OK Thanks a ton. So if you were in my situation, and the competition was the same for the keywords, which would you go for:

        - A partially hyphenated EMD with 1600 exact matches
        - A fully hyphenated EMD with 720 exact matches
        - A non-hyphenated EMD with 480 exact matches

        Thanks
        You're welcome. Personally, I would not go for any of the above... The search volume is simply too low. But, if I had to choose one I would go for the non-hyphenated EMD as a personal preference.

        However, let's assume I can get a partially-hyphenated EMD, the keyword gets 100,000+ exact searches per month and looking at the competition on the first page of Google's results I am confident I can outrank them then I would not think twice about going for a partially or fully-hyphenated TLD as the non-hyphenated ones will more than likely be gone.
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  • Profile picture of the author TBInternetMarketing
    Originally Posted by erea77 View Post

    My question is, would the EMD lose any value if it were instead "red-shoelaces.com"?
    No, I don't think so. I usually just add a single letter like 'x' to the end of the domain if I can't find an EMD, but what you're suggesting should work just as well. All you need to do is look at what is working for the first page of Google. You will see a variety of different combinations of domain names.
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    • Profile picture of the author erea77
      Ok great to hear. Thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author Julia Baby
    As for as your complete keyword is in the domain name, it will rank with quality backlinks and little bit on page seo & quality contents. Simple.
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  • Profile picture of the author hicksdelight
    i have had success doing that, if i cant find any hyphented domains though i just add an e to the beginning, like eredshoelaces.com...found that fine to do as well and have had success with it.
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  • Profile picture of the author UpzeeDotCom
    I am new to this board so I don't know what kind of (mis)information is being passed around about EMDs however I'll offer my opinion in an all encompassing manner:

    1) EMDs without hyphens are given preferential treatment.
    2) EMDs with hyphens are considered exact match in the url string, the same as if it were site.com/red-shoe-laces.html. The only added advantage to having a EMD it hypehns over a generic domain name with file name as the keyword would be that your keyword density is going to be higher seeing how the site.com is not apart of it.
    3) Google considers hyphens to be spaces, so if you have red-shoelaces, it'd be the same as "red shoelaces".
    4) You don't want to pick a domain name that is too small of a scope. For example, if your site is about basketball, you don't want to have kobebryant.com and then try to back peddle your way out of that niche into ranking your domain name #1 for "basketball". Assuming your site structure is like this:

    Basketball
    -Los Angeles Lakers
    --Kobe Bryant

    So your final option being the non-hyphenated domain name, has the best chances of ranking for that exact keyword. However if you're thinking about getting that domain name and then making the theme of your website the larger - broader - scope of the keyword found in the first option (partially hyphenated EMD with 1600 exact matches), it's not going to work. It will be like trying to drive a square peg into a round hole.

    With all of that being said, SEO is about ROI. In addition to looking at the traffic you should look at the CPC of each of the keywords. Often times the more targeted keywords
    have a higher CPC than the broader keywords because they're profitable. Considering that the non-hyphenated keyword will be easier to rank and could very well have the highest CPC, it might be the best option.
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    • Profile picture of the author erea77
      Originally Posted by UpzeeDotCom View Post

      I am new to this board so I don't know what kind of (mis)information is being passed around about EMDs however I'll offer my opinion in an all encompassing manner:

      1) EMDs without hyphens are given preferential treatment.
      2) EMDs with hyphens are considered exact match in the url string, the same as if it were site.com/red-shoe-laces.html. The only added advantage to having a EMD it hypehns over a generic domain name with file name as the keyword would be that your keyword density is going to be higher seeing how the site.com is not apart of it.
      3) Google considers hyphens to be spaces, so if you have red-shoelaces, it'd be the same as "red shoelaces".
      4) You don't want to pick a domain name that is too small of a scope. For example, if your site is about basketball, you don't want to have kobebryant.com and then try to back peddle your way out of that niche into ranking your domain name #1 for "basketball". Assuming your site structure is like this:

      Basketball
      -Los Angeles Lakers
      --Kobe Bryant

      So your final option being the non-hyphenated domain name, has the best chances of ranking for that exact keyword. However if you're thinking about getting that domain name and then making the theme of your website the larger - broader - scope of the keyword found in the first option (partially hyphenated EMD with 1600 exact matches), it's not going to work. It will be like trying to drive a square peg into a round hole.

      With all of that being said, SEO is about ROI. In addition to looking at the traffic you should look at the CPC of each of the keywords. Often times the more targeted keywords
      have a higher CPC than the broader keywords because they're profitable. Considering that the non-hyphenated keyword will be easier to rank and could very well have the highest CPC, it might be the best option.
      Thank you very much for the advice, and I can see your logic. This is where I get confused on what I should do though. Some of the experienced members here are saying that hyphenated, non-hyphenated, and semi-hyphenated EMD's are going to deliver equal ranking power, but then you say that it would be significantly less ranking power with hyphens.

      I can see the logic in both ideas but I wish there were some examples or case studies that could solidify the right answer.

      Thanks again for the advice!
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      • Profile picture of the author UpzeeDotCom
        Originally Posted by erea77 View Post

        Thank you very much for the advice, and I can see your logic. This is where I get confused on what I should do though. Some of the experienced members here are saying that hyphenated, non-hyphenated, and semi-hyphenated EMD's are going to deliver equal ranking power, but then you say that it would be significantly less ranking power with hyphens.

        I can see the logic in both ideas but I wish there were some examples or case studies that could solidify the right answer.

        Thanks again for the advice!
        Can you point me to a thread where people say red-shoe-laces.com is going to be the equivalent as redshoelaces.com? I mean the biggest case study there is, is the SERPs. I have been doing SEO for over 10 years and look at SERPs all day long every day. It seems like regardless of who the experts are that were advocating the equivalency of hyphenated domains names to non-hyphenated domain names - it would be quite easy to win that argument. Even if it was Matt Cutts himself making the argument.

        The only reason I've seen people get confused in the past is because keyword.com is much stronger than keyword1keyword2.com and in turn keyword1-keyword2.com. But because both keyword1keyword2.com and keyword1-keyword2.com are second and tier EMD domains it does not mean that both of them are on the same second tier to the first. A real world example:

        Plumbers - ideal EMD is going to be plumbers.com, plumbers.net, etc.
        Chicago Plumbers - chicagoplumbers.com, chicagoplumbers.net, etc are ideal, while chicago-plumbers.com or chicago-plumbers.net are both strong domain names, but not because they're EMD but rather just because of the high keyword density in the domain name.

        Anyway, I realize you're not advocating it yourself, you're just saying this is what experts have said on this board. As I mentioned I'm new here so I don't know who you're referring to or in what context they said it.
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        • Profile picture of the author erea77
          Originally Posted by UpzeeDotCom View Post

          Can you point me to a thread where people say red-shoe-laces.com is going to be the equivalent as redshoelaces.com? I mean the biggest case study there is, is the SERPs. I have been doing SEO for over 10 years and look at SERPs all day long every day. It seems like regardless of who the experts are that were advocating the equivalency of hyphenated domains names to non-hyphenated domain names - it would be quite easy to win that argument. Even if it was Matt Cutts himself making the argument.

          The only reason I've seen people get confused in the past is because keyword.com is much stronger than keyword1keyword2.com and in turn keyword1-keyword2.com. But because both keyword1keyword2.com and keyword1-keyword2.com are second and tier EMD domains it does not mean that both of them are on the same second tier to the first. A real world example:

          Plumbers - ideal EMD is going to be plumbers.com, plumbers.net, etc.
          Chicago Plumbers - chicagoplumbers.com, chicagoplumbers.net, etc are ideal, while chicago-plumbers.com or chicago-plumbers.net are both strong domain names, but not because they're EMD but rather just because of the high keyword density in the domain name.

          Anyway, I realize you're not advocating it yourself, you're just saying this is what experts have said on this board. As I mentioned I'm new here so I don't know who you're referring to or in what context they said it.
          Thanks for the explanation, I really appreciate it.

          So my experience with EMD's is I used a non-hyphenated EMD about a year ago for a keyword that had 10,000 exact match searches/month and was medium competition. Just by doing some basic onsite optimization it was instantly in the #3 position.

          Now I know that it will vary from keyword to keyword, but from what I gather from your explanation, a hyphen separated EMD would not have the ranking power to have a similar effect.

          Let me know what you think.
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          • Profile picture of the author UpzeeDotCom
            Originally Posted by erea77 View Post

            Now I know that it will vary from keyword to keyword, but from what I gather from your explanation, a hyphen separated EMD would not have the ranking power to have a similar effect.

            Let me know what you think.
            This is true, you're not going to be able to throw up a hyphenated domain name and instantly see rankings based on on-page efforts in competitive niches. However I do want to be clear that I am not saying it's hard to rank a hyphenated domain name, if you do the regular off page SEO of building links, plus you have strong content, you can definitely rank that hyphenated domain name. You just won't see those phenomenally easy results that non-hyphenated EMDs provide.
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    • Profile picture of the author Francois du_Toit
      Originally Posted by UpzeeDotCom View Post

      I am new to this board so I don't know what kind of (mis)information is being passed around about EMDs however I'll offer my opinion in an all encompassing manner:
      Welcome.

      1) EMDs without hyphens are given preferential treatment.
      Really? The is not the case in my experience and Google has made that clear as well on many different occasions. On what do you base this assumption? If you have conducted extensive tests please share your results with us.

      2) EMDs with hyphens are considered exact match in the url string, the same as if it were site.com/red-shoe-laces.html. The only added advantage to having a EMD it hypehns over a generic domain name with file name as the keyword would be that your keyword density is going to be higher seeing how the site.com is not apart of it.
      So are you saying it makes no difference to Google whether your url is keyword1-keyword2.com or site.com/keyword1-keyword2/? Seriously?!

      3) Google considers hyphens to be spaces, so if you have red-shoelaces, it'd be the same as "red shoelaces".
      Yes, they do consider hyphens to be spaces but they are very good at separating words.

      Google will see myredshirt.com and my-redshirt.com both as my red shirt.
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      • Profile picture of the author UpzeeDotCom
        Originally Posted by Francois du_Toit View Post

        Welcome.
        Cheers.

        Originally Posted by Francois du_Toit View Post

        Really? The is not the case in my experience and Google has made that clear as well on many different occasions. On what do you base this assumption? If you have conducted extensive tests please share your results with us.
        Hehe, well if Google has "made it clear ... on many different occasions" why speculate? End the argument right now by linking me to where Google has made it clear? What I am talking about here is similar to what OP mentioned in one of his/her posts:

        "So my experience with EMD's is I used a non-hyphenated EMD about a year ago for a keyword that had 10,000 exact match searches/month and was medium competition. Just by doing some basic onsite optimization it was instantly in the #3 position."

        This type of extreme preferential is given to exact match domains without any hyphens in them. From there, I am not saying there is a penalty let alone a difficulty in ranking domains with hyphens in them. There's nothing wrong with them. I am simply saying the non-hyphenated EMDs get clear preferential treatment that does not extend to hyphenated domains.

        Originally Posted by Francois du_Toit View Post

        So are you saying it makes no difference to Google whether your url is keyword1-keyword2.com or site.com/keyword1-keyword2/? Seriously?!
        The quote you replied to said:

        "The added advantage to having an EMD with hyphens over a generic domain name with file name as the keyword would be that your keyword density is going to be higher seeing how the site.com is not apart of it."

        So why would you ask me if it makes no difference to Google when I clearly stated what the difference is? You seem argumentative.

        Originally Posted by Francois du_Toit View Post

        Yes, they do consider hyphens to be spaces but they are very good at separating words.

        Google will see myredshirt.com and my-redshirt.com both as my red shirt.
        Again, in terms of how easy it is to rank a non-hyphenated EMD, the hyphen makes a difference. We all know that Google is able to understand my-redshirt.com is my red shirt. Perhaps I misspoke in my earlier explanation. I apologize.
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        • Profile picture of the author Francois du_Toit
          Originally Posted by UpzeeDotCom View Post

          I am simply saying the non-hyphenated EMDs get clear preferential treatment that does not extend to hyphenated domains.
          Really? Once again I am asking you on what do you base your statement.

          "To answer a common question, Google doesn't algorithmically penalize for dashes in the url."
          Source: Dashes vs. underscores

          Are you saying Matt Cutts is wrong? Do you have any evidence that will back up your statement? Anything at all?
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  • Profile picture of the author hicksdelight
    If red-shoelaces.com would be seen as red shoelaces, then surely redshoelaces.com would be seen as redshoeslaces.

    I would think if it can seperate the words in non hyphen emd domains like redshoelaces.com, then it can seperate the words in red-shoelaces?

    Anyway in my experience I have had great experience with domains that use hyphens or an extra letter in it.
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    • Profile picture of the author erea77
      Originally Posted by hicksdelight View Post

      If red-shoelaces.com would be seen as red shoelaces, then surely redshoelaces.com would be seen as redshoeslaces.

      I would think if it can seperate the words in non hyphen emd domains like redshoelaces.com, then it can seperate the words in red-shoelaces?

      Anyway in my experience I have had great experience with domains that use hyphens or an extra letter in it.
      That was my thought as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author hicksdelight
    In terms of ranking power, non hyphenated emd domain will win every time.

    doesnt mean you cant have success with hyphenated domains though, just dont expect to out rank an emd with a half decent seo job behind them.

    but depending on the keyword/traffic etc its upto you to decide whether it will be worth it.
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