Two Domain Questions

[datacaliber]

1) Let's say you have a keyphrase with two words like "Tuna Salad". Will having the domain tunasalad.com help you in the rankings or will only tuna-salad.com help? Is MSN smart enough to put the words together?

2) Will redirecting a domain transfer it's uh keyword points to the destination domain?

I ask this because I own both versions of a keyphrase, the one with and without a hyphen, and I want to know which one is boosting my rank. I have the hyphen one pointing to the non-hyphen and I'm ranked #1 for the keyphrase.

[cabowabo]

The big push for keyword rich domains has past, and if you really want to use it, use third-level domains instead. Easier to manage and less expensive, plus it builds branding on one domain.

MSN is getting more stable but testing results vary tremendously.

Cheers,

CaboWabo

[datacaliber]

Thanks for the response but I think you misunderstood what I was asking.

If tuna salad is the key phrase, I own both tunasalad.com and tuna-salad.com. The first thing I wanted to know is whether MSN is smart enough to recognize that tunasalad == tuna salad. If it is, the tunasalad.com would get a boost.

Secondly, I wanted to know whether forwarding tuna-salad.com to tunasalad.com would transfer the domain boost in rankings.

I currently have tuna-salad.com forwarding to tunasalad.com. The website is currently #1 for the passphrase and I'm trying to figure out why. The actual site is rather sparse, leading me to believe that it is the domain(s) that are giving me the boost.

[RichTC]

Hi,

imo msn is smart enough to associate the domain with the duel words. you will see plenty of examples where tunasalad.com will rank for Tuna Salad providing the onpage is right and the off page links to it are right.

As for pointing domains, imo this has little effect. In the uk i often point a .com version to the same site just in case someone types the url with .com rather than .co.uk likewise i have tuna-salad pointing to tunasalad in case they incert a dash in the domain name but the search engine rates the principle domain name site. ie it wont give anything extra for the other domains, it wont help you rank its just helpfull if someone types the address into the url bar in the wrong format, you will still get the traffic rather than lose it.

Good luck