Settle the debate – Dashes in domain names?
I’ve spent hours reading up on this, and can’t make a decision. Can anyone tell me your bottom line? But let me give you some background first:
I happened to stumble upon an incredibly good domain name that competitors would give their right arms for. I’m not going to list it, but let’s just say it’s "babyclothes.com" and "baby-clothes.com".
I’ve bought both domain names…. Now, according to theory, it would be wise to use "baby-clothes.com" as the primary source to market to search engines because they would all see the name as a keyword "baby clothes"
As far as being easy to remember, I’ve covered that too. Let’s say people accidentally type in "babyclothes.com" instead. Who cares? It will re-direct to the correct place. No problems there.
Having said all that, a part of me still thinks its ridiculous to market a hyphenated domain name. It just seems strange.
If I submitted "babyclothes.com" to Google, would it be that bad? Are hyphens really the holy grail to SEO?
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I don’t think it really matters too much. What’s going to get your page a higher ranking is page hits and link-backs from other sites. Yeah, a hyphen will probably help. But don’t freak out over it.
Submit babyclothes com
This debate has been settled a long time ago in search conferences and by Google themselves.
Two word domains with a dash between them are better for ‘anchor text’ links where you have NO CONTROL over the text being used to link to you. So this domain name is the one you use for your link building activity. Since search rank implies "clicking" rather than typing, a dash between your (well-researched) keywords is best. This is true on Google but especially true on Yahoo.
Dash-less domains are better for business cards, phone calls, and other conversations. In other words if people are more likely to type it in, skip the dash, since you own both, and forward the dashless one to your site.
That being said, this is a minimal influence if you’re doing your link-building right. You should concentrate on getting the anchor text links to your site to include your keywords, NOT your domain name. The domain name-as-anchor-text is an insurance policy for when people use your website address as the anchor text.
Also keep in mind that you should concentrate all of your SEO activities on ONE DOMAIN… the other would be forwarded to it. So I’d optimize on baby-clothes.com and put babyclothes.com in my voice mail, business card, and so forth. You can adjust your .htaccess file on your server to forward things in a way that the search engines pay attention to.. it’s called a 301-permanent redirect in case you want to read up on it. If people link to you using the dash-less one, just email or call them and ask for a change.
IF YOU DIDN’T have both names, I’d recommend the one without the dashes.
EVEN GETTING links like that means great content and participation in your customers social circles. That’s where I’d spend my energy.
Scott Clark
http://www.sitecreations.com
Hyphens have nothing to do with search engine optimization in the root URL. It certainly helps for file names to separate keywords on your pages, but not the actual URL.
If i were you I would most definitely market the non-hyphen version. Its far easier to remember for people and you can push any type in traffic with hyphens into the main site.