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If I use a hyphenated phrase repeatedly on my page will it count towards my ranking for the individual parts of the phrase. So if my page has red-dog multiple times in the text will this be counted in ranking my page for search terms red and dog?
Our marketing guys like hyphenated product names!
Take it straight from the search engine. Try "red-dog" and "red dog" (with or without quotes). Do you see any difference?
I see no difference in Google and no difference in Fast.
But Altavista and Teoma will give you different results.
So, every search engine see it differently. I try to built one page for "red-dog" and another for "red dog" whenever possible.
A Top Tip for newcomers is to make friends with the Site Search facility (at the top of this page). There is such a wealth of info here, it's unlikely that you'll be asking a truly new question.
A quick scoot found:
Looksmart inserting hypens in keywords [webmasterworld.com]
Yahoo! inserting hypens in keywords [webmasterworld.com]
benefits (or otherwise) of hypenated domain names [webmasterworld.com]
The short answer to your question is that search engines regard a hypen as a space (ie. "red-dog" would be seen as "red dog"). At least, that's what I gather happens regarding hypenated domain names. So you probably won't be losing anything by hypenating your product names, but I don't think you'll gain anything (in SE terms) either.
Hope this helps.
[Added]Macguru (msg #:2) - seems to be taking from experience, so I'd go with his wisdom![/Added]
Take it straight from the search engine. Try "red-dog" and "red dog" (with or without quotes). Do you see any difference?I see no difference in Google and no difference in Fast.
While the top 10 SERPs in Google are identical, there is a significant difference indeed...
Google Search: red dog
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,720,000
Google Search: red-dog
Results 1 - 10 of about 119,000
Google treats keyword1-keyword2 about the same as putting the keywords in quotes with regards to proximity and keyword order for relevancy.
If you pick two much more obscure words that are less logically linked by a hyphen, you'll find this effect becomes much more apparent even on the first page of SERPs.
Try... life donuts, life-donuts, and "life donuts" to see this demonstrated.
