Naming-websites-with-hyphens

they're all on top of serps!

[flexsez]

I have a new project in the workd for 2003.

From what I have read on these forums regarding website naming, the popular opinion seems to be that using a name with hyphens doesn't increase your chances of coming in on the first page of the Serps.

But, from what I can see in Google, sites-with-hyphens (with keywords) are doing rather well in the serps.

So if I am to grab a new domain for 2003, do you think it makes sense to get a keyword-with-hyphen domain, or just go the traditional route?

[Brett_Tabke]

Get both and put unique content on both.

Hyphens are too easy to filter for by se's. There value is always going to be rising and falling.

[rfgdxm1]

I'd disagree, except possibly if he is thinking about some ridiculous domain with 5 or 6 hyphens. While I can possibly see Google some day not giving any benefit to blue-widgets.com, I find it hard to imagine using a "brand" name with no keywords in it would be an advatage. And, with the better domain names taken, often a hyphenated one is the only reasonably choice.

[flexsez]

The domain name I am thinking about is 3 words max.

One word for the product, one desciptive word for product,
and one word for the company who makes the product.

[Chief]

I have found that domains with hyphens do help. It is one, of many other things Google does use in there algo. How much weight it gives the domain is another story, but I have found and could probably prove that it does help some.

BUT, only do it with short keyword phrases that people are searching for. You will dilute it by putting extra keywords in the phrase and will render it ineffective..

[ciml]

I don't believe that there's any significant weighting given by Google to domains, but hyphens can help to get benefit from links that use the domain name as link text.

As Brett points out, search engines including Google may act on multi-hyphenated domains. I'd rather they didn't; a while ago someone here suggested treating hyphens as underscores in link text (sorry, I can't remember who). That's a great idea IMO.

Even then flexsez, you'd still find that a lot of domains with hyphens would score well; just because they are often put up by people who care about letting search engines understand their topic. Those people would still rank high if they didn't have hyphens.

[rfgdxm1]

For whatever reason, hyphenated domain names do seem to do well on Google. If Google ever does start giving negative weight to hypenated domain names, I'd suspect it would be the ones with many hyphens, and not just one or two. There are just too many domains that exist out there with one or two hyphens that weren't chosen with SEO is mind at all. However, can't think of seeing many domain names with 6 hypens that it wasn't done for SEO reasons.

[duckhunter]

I'd suspect it would be the ones with many hyphens, and not just one or two

Good point and I wouldn't worry about a single hyphen at all.

[robertito62]

I get both. If I develop one site that ends up high on SERPSs, I would not want my competition to get the hyphenated version.

Brettīs advice on developing unique content on each sounds great.

[pageoneresults]

and one word for the company who makes the product.

flexsez, I'd be real careful with that last criteria you have there. Using another company's name in the URL may be in violation of copyright.

I have some war stories to share about company names in the domain. One inparticular where the mfg was okay with us having the name at the beggining. But, after 90 days into our promotion, the mfg pulled the plug and filed lawsuit against my client. We were outperforming the mfg and its largest distributor in both sales and positioning in the SERPs. They didn't take real kindly to that "after the fact" and you can probably visualize what happened from there.

[flexsez]

pageoneresults,

Thanks for the tip. Duking it out with the manufacturer
could trun into a sticky wicket in a hurry.

[Brian]

The benefit of hyphens and underscores, it seems to me, is that the SE's will read both (or more) words, rather than only the first one. Yahoo's display of domain names shows this more clearly. I do this a lot with filenames. The SE starts reading the characters and stops when it's digested a word it recognizes. But you would have to buy both versions of the domain, or (a) you'll have trouble giving it verbally (ever hear those commercials which say "dubleudubleudubleu statute hyphen of hyphen liberty dot com"), and (b) somebody else may buy the other version.

[coconutz]

>>The benefit of hyphens and underscores, it seems to me, is that the SE's will read both (or more) words, rather than only the first one.

There seems to be varied thoughts regarding the use of hyphens and/or underscores:

[url=http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/4572.htm]Hyphen or Underscore?

[jk3210]

My guess is that hyphenated domains do well only because they were built by someone who targeted those keywords and therefore did some OTHER SEO things correctly that were totally unrelated to the picking of a domain name.

Additionally, if you were going to build a site pertaining to "blah blah hotels," why WOULD you name it anything other than "blah-blah-hotels, if that domain was available? Would a user find something like "cleansheetsandnotmanyroaches.com" more helpful?