Does-using-hyphens-affect-rankings???

D

docdizzle

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I have been trying to find info on this from the big G but have found little to no resources about the subject. How does G view hyphens or dashes in domains? will a domainwithoutahyphen.com work as well as a domain-with-a-hyphen.com? Any guidance on the subject would be much appreciated!
 
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It is fine for ranking - you just lose out on if the user tries to type in the url directly your competitor with the exact match might get the hit, but oh well... :)

Think if a hyphen as a stop word - same thing
 
kellybrook said:
no-not-at-all
Click to expand...

Right, but a lot of people are not used to it. If someone asks you what your site is, you FOR SURE don't want to say "my hyphen website".
People will not remember. You will have people going to competitor sites and everything.
If you can help it, DO NOT do this! Work with the name until you find one that works without hyphens.
 
Sometimes the end user that is inexperienced will see a url with a hyphen and will be turned off.

I remember listening to a web analysis talk where it was shown that the average internet user will not click on a url with a hyphen because they associate it with a 'shaddy site'.

You will still rank for SEO but click thrus to your site could suffer.
 
Its fine in regards to generating search traffic.

Your only issue will be with 'type in traffic' who will expect the words to be concatenated.

-aReJay
 
it would not.i have seen domains with hyphens getting ranked on top with average quality backlinks and have also been sold for several thousand grand in flippa.
 
Search Engine will not be affected by it but as others pointed this kind of url doesn't bring confidence in user's so they might avoid it and go for different site... It also turns out in loss when people are typing url of your site and miss them... Basically loss with user's not with search engine ranking...
 
So basically I can rank them but it might turn off the end user and reduce click-thru's. Got it. Thanks for the help guys.
 
HannahMontana said:
Right, but a lot of people are not used to it. If someone asks you what your site is, you FOR SURE don't want to say "my hyphen website".
People will not remember. You will have people going to competitor sites and everything.
If you can help it, DO NOT do this! Work with the name until you find one that works without hyphens.
Click to expand...

People don't say 'hyphen'... they'd say 'my dash website'.. irrelevant though because unless you're going to be branding a ton you won't get much type-in traffic. If it's mostly IM then people will be linking to you... otherwise try to avoid hyphens if you want to build a brand
 
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