Do dashes make a difference?

Just wondering if dashes make a difference when choosing an EMD for a kw.

For example, if my keyword is "how to"
www,howto,com
www,how-to,com

Thanks
Joe

jpeace808 said:

Just wondering if dashes make a difference when choosing an EMD for a kw.

For example, if my keyword is "how to"
www,howto,com
www,how-to,com

Thanks
Joe

Click to expand...

For ranking no

For branding yes.

If you are just worried about trying to rank your site then it does not matter, if you are planning on branding your site so people come back to it later and want them to remember the domain name then yes it does matter.

Right on, really appreciate it!

some guys even prefer dashes.

Don't ever use double hyphens ( http://www.how--to.com ) though because they are harder to rank!

I've got six leftover from a bunch of domains I bought ages ago, and they were much harder to rank. they also look pretty desperate from a domain perspective.

I agree with what Volund says though, from a branding perspective they don't look as nice and are not as memorable.

I was going to ask this because my competition site is exactly what my keywords are so I had to use a dash. Good thing is that there's no ads or products on their site...just some articles

thank you volund

Another thought about multiple dashes in the domain name.

I did some testing first part of last year and while I did not notice that much of a difference in getting them to rank I did notice a difference in clicks.

There was not any measurable difference with one dash in the domain but once you moved up to two or three the domain got less clicks than comparable sites without multiple dashes got for the same rankings. I tested it over three different niches and it was the same for all three.

Searches do seem to find multiple dashes less appealing and a certain percentage of them will skip the domain and click the next one down the list. I did NOT find this to be true for just one but for multiples there was a difference.

As volund said it is not harder to rank domains with dashes but people don't seem to like websites with dashes. I alwasy get more visits from clean domains without any dashes. BTW a EMD with one dash can be as easy to rank as EMD without a dash.