Hey everyone, I was wondering how dashes in the domain name affected overal ranking, etc? My interest in dashes is that it allows me to have specific keywords in the domain related to the content of the site.

example:

thiswebsitedomain.com is taken, so..
this-website-domain.com instead?

I also like it in case you have two words in the domain name, first one ending in "D" and the second one beginning with "D". It separates the words, making it readable.

I understand the conflict with people typing in the domain, newcomers in general, may forget the dashes, but is this a better alternative to get the .COM domain you want instead of settling for an available .NET or equivalent domain?

Your thoughts?

I was wondering how dashes in the domain name affected overal ranking, etc? My interest in dashes is that it allows me to have specific keywords in the domain related to the content of the site.

They don't and neither do "keywords in domain"

I see that you commonly post against what most of us are told about SEO, and while I agree there are a lot of people out there spewing a lot of BS about SEO and what it entails, I am curious what you'd have to say regarding the importance (if there is any at all) of choosing a proper fitting domain name? Does it matter at all?

I see that you commonly post against what most of us are told about SEO

That's because I've been around Search Engines for long enough to know how, and what to test rather than believe some speculative "theory" that fails dismally when you actually look around t real sites.

Choose your hostname to suit your Business not some half baked theory..

UNLESS you always want to be we-sell-blue-widgets.com even though you sell lots of other things.

It definitely doesn't make "much" difference, but probably if all things were equal without the dash would rank better.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

That's because I've been around Search Engines for long enough to know how, and what to test rather than believe some speculative "theory" that fails dismally when you actually look around t real sites.

Choose your hostname to suit your Business not some half baked theory..

UNLESS you always want to be we-sell-blue-widgets.com even though you sell lots of other things.

I see. Well, the dashes in the domain I am looking at is simply because the non-dash form is simply a parked premium domain that I don't have $2,000 to buy... But, it is exactly in tune with the business nature of the site.

And just so you know my post before wasn't saying YOU were posting BS SEO stuff, I was just saying I read a lot of BS SEO stuff because a lot of people who has read a couple internet articles believe they're SEO experts afterward, haha.

I'm no expert when it comes to SEO, but I would think that using dashes isn't very intuitive for most web users. It's not a very common practice, and it's definitely more difficult to verbally tell someone what your url is. Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it.

You can use or not use. That will not affect your SEO or something else.
Your domain name should be catchy and nice looking.
If you might noticed this forum use domain name with dash

Originally Posted by Norebbo

I'm no expert when it comes to SEO, but I would think that using dashes isn't very intuitive for most web users. It's not a very common practice, and it's definitely more difficult to verbally tell someone what your url is. Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it.

It is not that hard to tell someone that your domain name is something[dash]something.com i have been to lots of sites with a dash in their name and if anyone would ever need to know the link it would not be hard for me to tell them.

Of course.
The domain name webmaster-talk.com contain dash...
Don't you like it, do you?

Why not do both, for example...

my-domain.com
mydomain.com

This way, it would not matter if the surfer chooses to use the - or not.

You could use the one with the dash in advertisements, to help your customer read what the domain name says. But this way, it would not matter weather they do or not.

Originally Posted by TRANZIT JIM

Why not do both, for example...

my-domain.com
mydomain.com

This way, it would not matter if the surfer chooses to use the - or not.

You could use the one with the dash in advertisements, to help your customer read what the domain name says. But this way, it would not matter weather they do or not.

I agree. If possible, get both.

I have a couple of sites with dashes that get good traffic and the domain name doesn't even relate to the content, so I wouldn't worry about it.

Personally I'm not a big fan of hyphens in domain names. They just don't "flow" that well.

Chris, i disagree that keywords in domain names do not affect ranking. In my exerience of SEO (11 years) - keywords in domain names do increase serp rankings

Really sparky, what was google worth 12 years ago? $9.99. yahoo, youtube etc etc, all the big ones are, or were basically just meaningless words.
Isn't hotmail the biggest free mail provider? Why isn't email.com the biggest?
And 11 years ago seo consisted of large fonts and spamming your meta tags etc

Originally Posted by sparkymarky

Chris, i disagree that keywords in domain names do not affect ranking. In my exerience of SEO (11 years) - keywords in domain names do increase serp rankings

Find me ONE result where the ONLY mention of the word that the site/page ranks for is a keyword in the domain name.

asian marble
asianmarble.com
1st page result
Although I should add that it has sat there doing nothing for 6 or 7 years, also stuff like news cambodia and a few others that oneday I will get round to developing.

asiamarble is a better example, asianmarble is tied in with another domain so gets what little bit of google juice it has from that.

i disagree that keywords in domain names do not affect ranking