10 replies to this topic

[longhorn1999]

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=152d2ab04dc312c2&hl=en

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdWords/thread?tid=7139e60d2cbe0bf8&hl=en

I've looked around for the answer to this, but I don't see any definitive answers...maybe one of the SEO mavens here can help.

Is it better to have a store named www.somekeywordstore.com or www.some-keyword-store.com?

Matt Cutts talks about using hyphens instead of underscores, but I don't see any real answers from any authority figures anywhere.
Is it ok if I have one of these domains as my primary domain and just 301 redirect the other domain to the first? Does that give any SEO
benefit at all?

Any thoughts on this topic?

[Jack_mcs]

Whether it makes a difference or not is a long standing argument in the SEO community. The main question is whether the search engines use the domain name for ranking and that is not known and is difficult to measure. But what is known is that a-long-domain-name will be understood by the search engines as "a long domain name" while alongdomainname will be interpreted as alongdomainname, which would be useless for the individual words. So if the format does make a difference, which in my experience, it does, using hyphens is the way to go.

[longhorn1999]

Jack_mcs, on 16 July 2010, 13:24, said:

Whether it makes a difference or not is a long standing argument in the SEO community. The main question is whether the search engines use the domain name for ranking and that is not known and is difficult to measure. But what is known is that a-long-domain-name will be understood by the search engines as "a long domain name" while alongdomainname will be interpreted as alongdomainname, which would be useless for the individual words. So if the format does make a difference, which in my experience, it does, using hyphens is the way to go.

Thanks Jack. That would've been my guess as well but unfortunately for me, I'm already far along as somekeyworddomain.com. Obviously I should get the hyphenated domain and 301 redirect it to the main site...something I should have done a while ago.

[knifeman]

Jack_mcs, on 16 July 2010, 13:24, said:

Whether it makes a difference or not is a long standing argument in the SEO community. The main question is whether the search engines use the domain name for ranking and that is not known and is difficult to measure. But what is known is that a-long-domain-name will be understood by the search engines as "a long domain name" while alongdomainname will be interpreted as alongdomainname, which would be useless for the individual words. So if the format does make a difference, which in my experience, it does, using hyphens is the way to go.

The original question asked about SEO and I recognize your experience in that arena, but I have a site that is three words with no hyphens. If you google those 3 words with spaces in between each word, my site is at the top of the search results. I would be interested in where you see a difference from formatting.
Additionally my thoughts on hyphens, and that is all they are is my thoughts, are that the hyphens present a problem when conveying your website to other people. The simpler the name, the easier it is to tell someone where to go. Also, a simple name makes it easier for them to remember and come back. Now if you rent both names and point one to the other, no problem. If you are only going with one, the hyphens are much harder to convey.

Just as variations of words with letters and numbers.
stuffforsale.com
vs stuff4sale.com
vs stuff-for-sale.com

The first name is simple. The second one, you must tell somebody the name, then make sure they understand the word for is replaced by the number and hope they remember that when they get to their computer. I am constantly telling people either face to face or over the phone about my site. So a simple, easy to remember name is paramount. And like most things, we must juggle and try to acheive a balance.

Tim

[Jack_mcs]

knifeman, on 16 July 2010, 13:52, said:

The original question asked about SEO and I recognize your experience in that arena, but I have a site that is three words with no hyphens. If you google those 3 words with spaces in between each word, my site is at the top of the search results.

Thus the on-going debate. For each site that ranks well for non-hyphenated domain names, there is another that ranks well with them. The benefit is small, overall, and is difficult to measure, so there isn't a definitive answer on it.

Quote

I would be interested in where you see a difference from formatting.
Additionally my thoughts on hyphens, and that is all they are is my thoughts, are that the hyphens present a problem when conveying your website to other people. The simpler the name, the easier it is to tell someone where to go. Also, a simple name makes it easier for them to remember and come back.

Sites should always be coded with the customer in mind. Coding just for SEO is a mistake. But what's a simmpler name?

Quote

Now if you rent both names and point one to the other, no problem. If you are only going with one, the hyphens are much harder to convey.

Ownig both domain names won't help since the urls will be filtered down to the main one.

Quote

Just as variations of words with letters and numbers.
stuffforsale.com
vs stuff4sale.com
vs stuff-for-sale.com

The first name is simple. The second one, you must tell somebody the name, then make sure they understand the word for is replaced by the number and hope they remember that when they get to their computer. I am constantly telling people either face to face or over the phone about my site. So a simple, easy to remember name is paramount. And like most things, we must juggle and try to acheive a balance.

To me, typing in 3 f's in a row is as unnatural as typing in the hyphens. As mentioned, there's no clear answer on this one. If someone paid me to do the SEO work from the beginninig and they didn't have a preference for the domain name, I would tell them to purchase the one with the hyphen as the main domain name and the one without the hyphen as a parked domain name. But the next guy that does it may do the complete opposite.

[knifeman]

Jack_mcs, on 16 July 2010, 15:50, said:

Thus the on-going debate. For each site that ranks well for non-hyphenated domain names, there is another that ranks well with them. The benefit is small, overall, and is difficult to measure, so there isn't a definitive answer on it.

Fair enough.

Quote

Sites should always be coded with the customer in mind. Coding just for SEO is a mistake. But what's a simmpler name?

My idea of simpler is 'straight forward'. No hyphens, no substituting numbers for words, etc. Although I can some uses. Say a golf shop using fore instead of 'for'. golf stuff fore sale. Not that I think this example is good, just an example.

Quote

Ownig both domain names won't help since the urls will be filtered down to the main one.

Quote

I would tell them to purchase the one with the hyphen as the main domain name and the one without the hyphen as a parked domain name.

Not sure I understand this. I read these two lines as complete opposites. Would the parked domain point to the other?

Quote

To me, typing in 3 f's in a row is as unnatural as typing in the hyphens.

I agree that it is unnatural, but my feeling is that it is easier to communicate the site name and easier for a person to remember the site name without hyphens and any other 'clutter'. I have nothing against hyphenated names, I just prefer not to use them. Several years ago when My wife and I were trying to come up with our first website name, we ran into the problem that everything we wanted was already being used. After an hour of typing names into whois, we still had not found one available. Then we started trying variations. 4 instead of for, hyphens, and so on. After doing that for awhile, I decided we were way off track. It was going to take way too long telling somebody what my site name was. We started over and eventually came up with our 3 word name. Kinda long, but simple. I dislike using the name on the forum, but you did a review of it for me back in 2005.

Getting back to the SEO part of this, I guess it is like many things. Personal preference, not knowing for sure which is perceived by the SE as better, and also search engines are different. My main site is still on the first page of google, but for some reason it has dropped to the bottom of page 2 on yahoo. The work continues...

Tim

[Jack_mcs]

knifeman, on 16 July 2010, 16:16, said:

Not sure I understand this. I read these two lines as complete opposites. Would the parked domain point to the other?

Yes, a parked domain is used when you want to purchase similar domain names. So if your domain name is all-computers.com, you might want to purchase, allcomputers.com, allcomputres.net,allmycomputers.co.uk, and so on. Whichever other similar domain names you would purchase would point to your main domain name. So, in this example, anyone typing in allcomputers.com would end up on all-computers.com and the url would say all-computers.com. You can only optimze the site for one of those domain names so that would be the main for the site. All others would point to it. So if you wanted your main domain name to be stuffforsale.com but thought you should lock-in stuff4sale.com, then you would park stuff4sale.com. That won't have any effect on the SEO of the site at all. It just prevents someone from using a name that is so similar to yours.

[MrPhil]

Agreed that search engines may -- or may not -- care about individual keywords in a domain name. As that may change from time to time, it's probably not worth sweating over. It's more important to have keyword-rich text and pages titles, etc. -- it's definitely known that they look there.

As for burdening people with "that's a number 4, not 'f-o-r'", or having to spell out "stuff HYPHEN for HYPHEN sale DOT com", that can cut both ways. Having to repeat a domain name, and carefully spell it out, while annoying to a degree, also gives an excuse to slowly repeat the name, which helps victims, er, potential customers, to remember it better. Repetition of names help drive them home, at least until it's perceived as annoying.

If you have both stuffforsale.com and stuff-for-sale.com, that will catch people who tuned out the latter "hyphen" spelling and used the former. If they are pointing to the same pages, I would worry that a search engine might count it as duplicate pages and penalize you for it. Perhaps you could use .htaccess or robots.txt to exclude robots coming in on the "hyphenless" domain?

[knifeman]

MrPhil, on 16 July 2010, 16:35, said:

As for burdening people with "that's a number 4, not 'f-o-r'", or having to spell out "stuff HYPHEN for HYPHEN sale DOT com", that can cut both ways. Having to repeat a domain name, and carefully spell it out, while annoying to a degree, also gives an excuse to slowly repeat the name, which helps victims, er, potential customers, to remember it better. Repetition of names help drive them home, at least until it's perceived as annoying.

Point well taken. I see the logic there. And as you said, until it's perceived as annoying.

Tim

[arnoldblack]

domian name def used for ranking my site with no keywords in domain is in position 9 with 1000 backlinks, an exact match .com site is in number one with just 6 low pr backilins.

[Jack_mcs]

arnoldblack, on 17 September 2010, 16:29, said:

domian name def used for ranking my site with no keywords in domain is in position 9 with 1000 backlinks, an exact match .com site is in number one with just 6 low pr backilins.

I don't know how to read your statement clearly so I may be missing the point but PR doesn't make a big difference by itself so the conclusion is incorrect.