Domain names with hyphens

azguru

azguru

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Should I avoid creating a domain name with a hyphen? I have read up a lot about this and found a bunch of different views on it.

The reason I'm asking is because the domain I'm trying to register sounds confusing without a hyphen in the middle, however if the hyphen will hurt my ranking then i want to avoid it.

I'm looking to gain all my traffic from SEO so I'm not to worried about people having a hard time typing or remembering the hyphen.

Thoughts?

Thanks
 
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There are a ton of threads on this subject but bottom line a hyphen makes no difference. Use the search key and there are a ton of discussions on this and using keywords in domain names.
 
If it's necessary to put hyphen, I only use 1 hyphen. I always do this when I want a .com and can't find any tweak in the domain name and don't want to add numbers as suffix.
 
I dislike hyphenated domain names. I tend to stay away from websites that have them as well. Maybe it's because I know how IM works. So my opinion is to stay away from them if you can or use 1 maximum.
 
@everythingred, your opinion is based on real life facts that domain is not ranking good because of hypens, or you just dislike them for some reason ?
 
I have a natural pets products site that has 2 hyphens in the name. This site seems to be about normal as far as marketing it as compared to my non-hyphenated sites.

I have noticed though that some people will automatically think it s a lower quality site, simply because of the hyphens when I tell them about the name. I have no statistics as to whether this costs me customers when they look at the serps, but I suspect it does. If I get a visible face o face reaction, I cannot imagine that I don't get the same response online.

The site was easy to rank, and I make some adsense on it, but in my heart I believe that this decision to use hyphens is costing me readers who might otherwise come to my site.

I do not see it affect my SEO, but I think it affects my readership, and I would not do it again. (All i have in the site is a $10 domian name, and a few hours work)

I also have built a few sites that use the -cityname at the end of the domain name for local small businesses, such as ifixcars-houston. The benefit the cityname adds to the domain name out weighs any negative effect of the hyphen. I see absolutely no negative effects when used in this manner when applied to the local neighborhood merchant. I think, but cannot prove, that people simply like seing their city or neighborhood in print and their eyes gravitate to it in the serps on autopilot.


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I have hyphenated domain names that rank well. They are fine. Just don't make them super spammy like how-to-make-500-dollars-a-day-and-buy-50-porsches.com.
 
As long as you're not expecting type-in traffic, go for the hyphen. But also, as suggested in the first response, just get both and redirect to one.
 
cant say ive noticed a difference trying to rank either to be honest.
 
TZ2011 said:
@everythingred, your opinion is based on real life facts that domain is not ranking good because of hypens, or you just dislike them for some reason ?
Click to expand...

Based on dislike and mistrust. I have not said anything to do with rank, only how I view them. As for rank, you can rank, it doesn't need to be an EMD in order for it to do well for a given keyword.
 
Hyphen is a keyword separator... It does not hamper your ranking, instead gives you benefit (your domain may get ranked for all the keywords separated by hyphens)
 
As other above me said, it may give you some benefits when it comes to keyword ranking, having hyphens.

But, I don't recommend it. If you ever want you sell the site, most future clients will tend to avoid hyphen websites. So I suggest you don't go this way.
 
As far as the ranking goes hyphen no hyphen it does not matter... but to be honest ..how many sites do YOU go to with hyphen? I bet 1% ...and even that is bookmarked...
 
if having a hyphen makes your site make more sense, i think it makes sense to do it. as long as it doesn't look out of place in the title, who cares?
 
I've seen few popular websites with a hyphen. No to mention with two or three hyphens...they look pretty ridiculous with more then one hyphen.
 
a friend of mine who has had some pretty good success at IM ranking quite a few of his sites for strong keywords suggested that hyphens are OK as long as the domain is either highly searched for and /or has strong commercial intent. As with anything in IM one never really knows until you launch the site
 
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