Hyphenated keyword domains - better for anchor-text?

tigermann · 05-14-2004, 07:54 AM

When exchanging links, many webmasters often just use your domain as the anchor text.
Now that the major engines are able to parse joined up words (they are now able to do so - right?) - my question - is there still an SEO advantage in un-friendly hyphenated keyword domains?

Would a joined up keyword domain , for example,
bigbluewidgets still be at a disadvantage, when used as anchor-text, compared to big-blue-widgets?

I apologise if this has been discussed elsewhere recently.

cray · 05-14-2004, 09:11 AM

Hi,

I think the general response last time this was discussed that keyword-keyword.com was favoured for SEO over keywordkeyword.com.

Incidentally why do you feel a hyphenated domain is unfriendly?

awall19 · 05-14-2004, 09:17 AM

it is not real common that people link using the domain name. that is more the exception than the rule in my opinion.

search engines do not parse out words to break them down into mini words or other words that exist inside them to reevaluate them.

I generally like not using dashes, but many of the people here find them effective. The reason some people do not like them is that some think they harm branding. Everyone has their own opinion on the dash vs no dash...either way you look at it, it is still really important that you get some of your keywords in the domain name so that it is easier to get inbound links with those keywords in them

right now having keywords in the domain name is not an extremely large direct factor on relevancy, but algorithms can be reevaluated / changed over time.

tigermann · 05-14-2004, 12:27 PM

<<<<<<<
Incidentally why do you feel a hyphenated domain is unfriendly?
<<<<<<<
Not all, but some of the longer ones - but perhaps more importantly, unless you also buy the unhyphenated version and point it to your website you are bound to lose traffic to whoever owns your unhyphenated namesake.

<<<<<<<
it is not real common that people link using the domain name. that is more the exception than the rule in my opinion.
<<<<<<<<
It depends on the industry - I find those 1-person sites, managed by a "novice-webmaster" quite often just hyperlink your domain name or your url.

<<<<<<<
.... it is still really important that you get some of your keywords in the domain name so that it is easier to get inbound links with those keywords in them
<<<<<<
I don't disagree - in fact it was the premise I started the post with - my question is about hyphenated versus non-hyphenated keyword domains, not about keyword domains versus non-keyword domains.
Here is the question again:
If novice-webmasters choose to just hyperlink your domain, would it make a difference if your domain is
keyword1keyword2.com
instead of
keyword1-keyword2.com

Thanks.

greg · 05-14-2004, 12:37 PM

In the old days google saw a hyphen as simply a space. So for example if you had a site about blue bunnies the site bluebunnies.com would not return as well as blue-bunnies.com for the search term "blue bunnies".

This is because blue-bunnies.com was seen as two seperate words, and bluebunnies.com was seen as one.

However it appears this is not as big of a factor anymore. google is able to seperate commonly used words better.

For example, when you search for my commonamerica.org site using the term "Common America" i return first:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i...=Google+Search

However if you mix up the terms some you will see that this is not the case for other things:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ca&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ca&btnG=Search
for a few examples of this.

Being a new site the only real advantage i have over other sites, such as Dean for America which i assure you has far more links than I do, is the domain name. There are even other sites with the words Common and America in the title. Google is able to divide the words common and america up that are in my site address because they are both commonly used words.

All that being said, i feel hyphenated domains are beginning to lose any real advantage that they once had over the un-hyphenated domains.

cltwebs · 05-14-2004, 12:39 PM

I have had much success with hyphenated keyword domain names for SEO purposes but I do agree that they are user unfriendly for someone just typing in a domain name in the browser and finding your site. Many people wouldn't put a hyphen in the url.

I think that has much more weight when creating an anchor text link because your are using keywords twice in in some aspects.

awall19 · 05-14-2004, 05:27 PM

When you run a search engine Google breaks up the words in the domain name to highlight them in search results that page is ran through an external processor. It may or may not have anything to do with how the search engine algorithm works.

My seobook.com has a far stronger brand in my opinion than seo-book.com would have. I also do own search-marketing.info. Either way can and does work. The reason there is no absolutely clear defined answer is that there are tradeoffs. The hyphenated may rank a bit higher due to some people linking to the URL, and the unhyphenated page may be slightly more brandable.

Depending on what you are trying to do (what kind of site) depends on what will be better in my opinion. If you make a good enough site the hyphens will not hurt the brand that much (this site uses hyphens and thousands of people know about it).

James Trotta · 05-15-2004, 03:58 PM

What I've started doing is buying hyphenated and unhyphenated. I have the unhyphenated point to the hyphenated and submit the hyphenated for link exchanges & directories. And signatures.

awall19 · 05-16-2004, 12:54 AM

in my opionion i would stick with one or the other and get all my links to it. i would then point the other version at the same site.

cltwebs · 05-16-2004, 07:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awall19

in my opionion i would stick with one or the other and get all my links to it. i would then point the other version at the same site.

I agree with this. If there is a site that I'm going to market via the Search Engines I'll take the hyphenated name. If you want to brand a site for other means of marking I'll just take the nonhypenated name.
I have not came across it yet but I'm sure there may be an exception when to buy both.

kwvarga · 05-16-2004, 07:43 AM

greg: no one links you with "commonam erica" everyone links you with "common america"

tozzo · 05-19-2004, 08:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awall19

search engines do not parse out words to break them down into mini words or other words that exist inside them to reevaluate them.

Where is there proof of this?

Google seems to find words in multiple phrase words.... when I type in a two word phrase, and then it shows me a single word phrase which includes my two word phrase in it, i.e. dog bone yeilds dogbone; that tells me it works this way.

Type in two word phrases, get both two and single word phrases back. Type in one word phrase (dogbone) and you get results based on that. Google can find two words in one, but not the other way around.....

awall19 · 05-19-2004, 08:10 AM

that is an external highlighting program which the search results page is parsed through. it has nothing to do with the search algorithm.

tozzo · 05-19-2004, 11:38 AM

how are you so sure? If that was the case the results would then know to show me the highlighting when I type in a a word like dogbone... it should highlight all instances of dog and bone, but it does not... only the other way around.

Try it... search for free toothpaste, then freetoothpaste. One has both items in the SERP, ones does not... What does that mean?

awall19 · 05-19-2004, 11:48 AM

it does not break your query down into the words that exist within it.

otherwise the letter a somewhere in your word would make it highlight a everywhere the word a existed on the results page.

that would be ugly and irrelivant

tozzo · 05-19-2004, 12:02 PM

But "a" is a stop word.... Google disregards those and looks for words within words... try the experiment from my last post and tell me what you think....

We have seen domain names with both hyphens and non-hyphens perform well in google, but until Google comes out and says we do not read words within words, then all domain names should include hyphens (if you want keywords in your doimain to count.) Without the hyphens the words are meaningless.... based on what you have all said here......

awall19 · 05-19-2004, 12:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tozzo

Without the hyphens the words are meaningless.... based on what you have all said here......

except for the fact that they can still inspire keyword rich inbound links.

tozzo · 05-19-2004, 12:37 PM

a link on a web page that looks like this: freetoothpaste would help me just as much as one that looks like this: free toothpaste?

awall19 · 05-19-2004, 05:25 PM

often times when people link to you they link to your site as "free toothpaste" even if the words are ran together in your domain name.

for an example of what I am talking about view any major directory.

James Trotta · 05-19-2004, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tozzo

a link on a web page that looks like this: freetoothpaste would help me just as much as one that looks like this: free toothpaste?

I don't think so. When I started eslgo.com, I put an "eslgo.com" text link on every page. Since learning that Google doesn't count that as an instance of my main keyword, "ESL" I've been changing all the links. I've done fewer than 100 so far, but my results have been improving.