domains with a hyphen

[mpp]

i am wondering if i am facing any disadvantages in case of ranking when i am registering domains with a hyphen.

Do you guys have any experiences with it?

[Bagi Zoltán]

It mainly depends on your objects in my opinion. If you would like to register a keyword rich domain to gain distinguished rankings, you shouldn't hesitate, but it's important to consider that the domain should be easy to remember. So I don't suggest to use more than one hypen in the domain.

Good luck!

[mpp]

so i am not facing any disadvantages in case of ranking its more a matter of remembering the name for the user, right?

[lizza]

yeah,no problems at all for search engine ranking but it may creates some problems like visitors cannot remember the URL...so may have some less traffic due to this

[mpp]

well i am talking about 2 word domain. so this should hopefully work out.
Just registered it

[Bagi Zoltán]

I think that 2 words domain won't be difficoult to remember and you will see the seo advantages soon

[KeithCash]

I have some good luck with 3 word urls with hyphen

Good luck

Cheers

[mpp]

maybe i should also think about some 3 words combinations.
can you post any examples of your sites?

[David E]

Seems to work well for John's Internet Marketing Blog www.internet-marketing-blog.com I mean it's no.1 for Internet Marketing Blog and I just remembered the name of it without having to check.

[mpp]

yeah, thats indeed a perfect example.

[WebGeek182]

Originally Posted by David E

Seems to work well for John's Internet Marketing Blog www.internet-marketing-blog.com I mean it's no.1 for Internet Marketing Blog and I just remembered the name of it without having to check.

Good example.

With domain names, it's very important to find a good balance between user and search engine, and to choose the right domain for the purpose of site you are creating. It's important for users to be able to remember the domain name, and that it's easy to type, because people are the one who will link to your site, not search engines. The domain with hyphens works for internet-marketing-blog.com and it easier to rank for "internet marketing blog", but might not work so well if it was a primary company web site, because it would be more difficult for people to email user@internet-marketing-blog.com vs. user@v7n.com. Notice that for his main company web site John uses v7n.com...short, to the point, and easy to remember. A very good domain choice for a company, and internet-marketing-blog.com is a good choice for an internet marketing reference.

[lizza]

oohhh..No problem with that

Originally Posted by mpp

well i am talking about 2 word domain. so this should hopefully work out.
Just registered it

[Janna122003]

Originally Posted by mpp

i am wondering if i am facing any disadvantages in case of ranking when i am registering domains with a hyphen.

Do you guys have any experiences with it?

I use hyphen when selecting domain for my blog and the domain also contains my targeted keywords.

[Comenius]

Aesthetically, I'm not a big fan of hyphenated domain names.

I know it probably has a small impact on your SERP's, but it seems most of the search engines are smart enough to pick out keywords without them as well.

I don't think there's really a wrong answer. Just go with what's available, and what you personally like.

[Batch]

With domain names, it's very important to find a good balance between user and search engine, and to choose the right domain for the purpose of site you are creating. It's important for users to be able to remember the domain name, and that it's easy to type, because people are the one who will link to your site, not search engines. The domain with hyphens works for internet-marketing-blog.com and it easier to rank for "internet marketing blog", but might not work so well if it was a primary company web site, because it would be more difficult for people to email user@internet-marketing-blog.com vs. user@v7n.com. Notice that for his main company web site John uses v7n.com...short, to the point, and easy to remember. A very good domain choice for a company, and internet-marketing-blog.com is a good choice for an internet marketing reference.

Very good explanation. Moreover users take 5 to 7 seconds time to collect the information regarding a site. So it is very important to keep informations precise and to the point.

[LazySEO]

I haven't noticed any ranking disadvantages for my hyphenated domains. As the others have said, I'd be more concerned with making it easy to remember for your visitors, but a hyphenated 2-word domain shouldn't be that bad.

Personally, I prefer hyphens if the domain contains long words (internet-marketing-blog is a good example).

[Ender]

Actually I prefer not to use hyphens in domain names where I can. I'm not convinced Google need a hyphen in buykeyword.com because if you do generic, two keyword searches you'll see domain names in bold whether hyphenated or not. They make a big effort to parse keywords in domain names and if your keywords are in their very extensive dictionary they'll find them.

One important thing is to buy both. I saw a post by a woman who had a real estate domain without a hyphen and someone put up an adult site on the one with the hyphen. She had to decide whether or not to buy the guy out or transfer her domain.

Buy both domains, choose one and redirect the other to it. Don't think that you need to separate the keywords for Google, because you don't in my view.

Cheers,
Ender.

[WorldwideTrading]

Avoid using double hyphenated domains at all cost.

I registered send--flowers.co.uk a year or two ago and before google banned it altogether I had a nighmare with SEO tools, backlink checks, etc. Websites were saying my URL was invalid.

[factoring]

I have many sites with two and three words all with hyphens. They are all ranking but they are still new.

[ghostzer]

for 'memorability' purposes i think it works best for shorter ones. buy-my-product is memorable, extreme-skiing-montana is harder. it's all about how easy the phrase or set of words is, which often relates to word length and/or what the combination is (i.e. is it a phrase or just three words?).