Forum Moderators: open
keyword1-keyword2.com
or
keyword1-and-keyword2.com
I ask because I see a competitor has a top ranking with the -and- in the middle of the URL..
keyword1-keyword2.com is available.......
Build a brand for yourself, and you will have value, recurring customers, and better word of mouth than any small advantage of a keyword-and-keyword2 domain name.
At least, that's how I do it.
If I wanted to look like a search engine spammer I might go so far as to purchase:
keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4-keyword5-keyword6.com
But I don't think those have the 'power' of a good brand.
Remember, keep-the-hyphens-there-Google-loves-em.com
I use colgate ( I think ) to brush my teeth.
However, I have absolutely no idea what that word means.
There are good arguments for both.
I suppose its like all this stuff - its a combination of many factors that make a site successful. (And forgive my ignorance, but how do I create a hyperlinnk in a post - e.g. to hyperlink the "Successful Site ..." title to the original post?)
Dave
You can use the style codes [webmasterworld.com] when you post stuff, which are basically ubb if you are familiar with that.
That being said, your bit about, "it's all opinion" is relative: depending on the background of the person posting, they may have a statistically significant amount of data to back up their thoughts in these discussions. :)
However, there are a number of things, such as the 'keyword' domain idea, that really come down to what you are comfortable with.
Some think having a domain with six keywords - I've got a couple - makes it look like spam.
Some people prefer the 'brand name' idea, because it is a great way to help people spread the word about your product, and help your USP along the way. Of course, you can do that with a keyword-keyword2.com domain as well, but have you tried telling somebody "yes, it's dash - you know, on the top of the keyboard...?"
Kind of funny - I've explained that one to a few people. Doesn't work as well.
To each, their own. :)
SN
With one client we tried the 301 route, using the hyphenated domain name for backlinks and 301'ing to the concatenated domain. We noticed no advantage anywhere along the line, and over time the hyphenated domain has nearly vanished from the web. As the business became more firmly branded, backlink sites changed their links to the concatenated version, despite our requests. And all the customers refused to type the hyphens in their natural, viral mentions of the company around the web. In short, our strategy didn't work.
I also have a developer friend who has struggled for two years trying to get several hyphenated domains to dominate on a few searches - but to no avail. He's getting beat by domains that are totally brandname with no keywords.
Once the site is off the ground, you'll get far more visitors from one person telling another: "Yeah I saw this great site - it's called keywordkeyword (all one word) dot com" then you will from the search engines. (Though you'll get a lot from the search engines too).
Explaining punctuation in the middle of a URL can get messy:is a 'dash' a hyphen or an underscore...? Or is it a slash?
The search engines don't need the keywords to be separated by hyphens and brand names are probably the easiest URLs to remember.
So the best solution might be to come up with a two or three word brand name which includes one or two keywords.
For example: my domain is nonkeywordkeyword.com which makes for a snappy URL, a good brand name and includes the site's most important keyword in the URL.
My site is called, quite naturally keyword1keyword2keyword3.com but only because it's the natural best name, its the industry label, sort of like having searchengineamerica.com only that it works much better 8and is more pronouncable) in my case. I wanted a domain name that people can see and remember and type in when they get home, and that you can talk about on the phone without having to spell it out. In fact the say it-remember it-write it is one of the most important aspects when I choose a new domain. My problem is that google doesn't recognise any of the keywords in the domain, and since its such an industry label many people search for "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3" For which we luckily come up first. But I still feel that for many combinations of these keywords we have a disadvantage because google doesn't recognise them.
And since its an industry label the keywords would never apear anywhere else in the url (perhaps in the title though).
would getting keyword1-keyword2-keywrod3.com and 301ing it to my main domain help?
SN
I use colgate ( I think ) to brush my teeth.
However, I have absolutely no idea what that word means.
It is called Colgate because William Colgate started the company. But if you are a Colgate alumni, the 66th oldest college in the US, it means more than toothpaste. Which just goes to show that brand names mean different things to different people. Coke means rip-off sugar water to me but to someone else it may be the best drink they ever have.
It is often pointed out in this forum but worth repeating again that the big advantage of keyword1-keyword2.com is that it is likely to appear in in-bound link anchor text. The importance of this cannot be overestimated in my opinion.
To answer the original question if keyword1-keyword2.com makes sense e.g. adjective-noun.com then go for it. If it doesn't then construct a keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com that does. large-blue-widgets over largebluewidgets every time in my opinion.
I was considering something like that for my directory, so that people who wanted to link to, say restaurants in my country could link to restaurants.mydomain.com which would 301 to mydomain.com/category/restaurants
make any sense?
SN
This is why keyword1-keyword2.com is better. However, I'd say never go with keyword1-keyword2.com unless you ALSO can buy keyword1keyword2.com. You wouldn't want a competitor setting up shop in the future at the latter. Then just do a permanent redirect to keyword1-keyword2.com from keyword1keyword2.com in case someone types it in that way.
SN
>This is why keyword1-keyword2.com is better. However, I'd say never go with keyword1-keyword2.com unless you ALSO can buy keyword1keyword2.com. You wouldn't want a competitor setting up shop in the future at the latter. Then just do a permanent redirect to keyword1-keyword2.com from keyword1keyword2.com in case someone types it in that way.
I have word1word2.com and I outrank another site with word1-word2.com who bought the domain apparently as a result of me registering word1word2.com.
People link to me with the link text as "word1 word2" not "word1word2" because it makes linguistic sense to do that. I don't get the ranking benefit from the URL but I do get the ranking benefit from the inbound text.
Regardless of their URL or whether there's a space in their logo, if you were linking to BK then your link text would almost certainly be "Burger King" wouldn't it?
If I owned both domains then I'd redirect the hyphen domain to the non-hyphen domain, but I guess that's just personal preference.
it would be interesting if these had anywhere near the same weight as the 2nd level domains.
Concerning brandname / companyname domains or keyword domains:
If you have a brand or company name - use it for your domains.
Some of the reasons:
- it's mostly more easy to communicate and to remember
- it aggravates branding
- inbound links: people will more often link to your site with www.companyname.com than with www.keyword-keyword.com (because they'll remember your company's name more easy)
- you can have your keywords in URL by building your site like www.companyname.com/keyword/keyword.htm or similar
