Best domain to chose for SEO

[hiker_dave]

I'm curious as to what would be better. I know some search engines take into account keywords in the domain name. So for instance I want to start a site about twidly winks tournaments, would twidly-winks-tournaments.com with the hyphen be better than just twidlywinkstournaments.com for seo and page ranking?

[yuppiemtl]

I don't think you necessarily need a hyphen,
Google is smart enough for e.g. to find words "best buy" in
"bestbuy.com"

Also apparently the age of the domain is important too,
the longer the domain is registered the higher ranking
it gets (all other things considered equal)

[daveshap]

I would recommend twidlywinkstournaments.com as it's more likely to get direct type-in traffic.

[phranque]

i'm guessing "tiddlywinks" was merely an example here, but make sure you spellcheck your domain name...

by the way, welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com] all three of you! (hiker_dave, yuppiemtl and daveshap)

[bilalseo]

no use hypen in your url, Google uses hypen in title tags, and in urls as well.

thanks,

bilal

[Swanny007]

It's a consensus then. We agree to disagree :-)

To actually add value here :-) - I have a web site with a domain like widget-foo.com. I also registered widgetfoo.com and 301 redirected that to the hyphenated site. I have absolutely no ranking problems doing that. Hope that helps.

p.s. I hyphenated because one part of it was an acronym and I wanted people to see the distinction in the words and make it easier to remember. I doubt I get much type-in traffic anyway.

It's been my experience that SEO-wise the hyphens don't make a difference. Pick the one that's easier on the eyes and redirect the other domain to the main site.

[edited by: Swanny007 at 8:24 pm (utc) on Mar. 12, 2008]

[bilalseo]

I'd like to add one more thing that when the time of simulation, hypen gets the word separated, otherwise they are reading by the simulator with no sense. Like widget-foo.com will be reading by the simulators widget foocom, in this case site targeted keyword is appearing prominantely in the url i.e. widget foo.

thanks,

bilal