Is " - " good in a domain name?

Let me first start by saying that I'm new to SEO. I've done some research into niche and I found one that interests me. Checked to see if someone had gotten the domain name with the keyword and of course they did. I'd like domain with keyword as close as possible so, as the topics says; Does a - in a domain name make ranking harder?

EMD >> domain with dashes (-) >> non-EMD IMO, so no, I don't think a domain with dashes makes ranking harder

It just makes domains stupid. Noone likes dashed domains.

Yes, but if it has enough exact monthly searches then you will get a fair share.

I disagree, I think it looks more natural in some cases.

kayzne said:

It just makes domains stupid. Noone likes dashed domains.

Click to expand...

If you want to rank for keyword "This term"
This-term in url is closest you can get to This term
This_term is directive to google to read like Thisterm so dont use that
I say best way is to go with "-"

or you can add something to the term, like:
my...
...review
the...

etc.

D.

Don't use a dash. While it doesn't make it harder to RANK at the very moment, it's a lot safer to use a non-dash domain with a modifier at the end.

If your keyword was Black Hat and that's taken, using Black Hat World is just as ok and even gives you a bit of flavor.
If you expand to podcasts, radio, TV or videocasts it's going to be a LOT harder for you to verbally give your URL.

Which of these sounds better:
"Visit us pumpkin dash carving"
"visit us at pumpkin carving central"
EDIT: Got flagged for URLs so my examples are a bit worse than before"


It's just a lot SAFER to use a non-dash domain with a modifier. You can't predict the future. Even if right now you don't want to use a podcast... what will happen when google announces it will weigh in heavily on backlinks from itunes? or what will happen when google's grizzly update penalizes domains with dashes? It might happen, but they will NEVER penalize domains with modifiers.

And what happens if you need some quick cash so you want to sell the site? Because of these future uncertainties and the difficulty to verbally say, you're going to have buyers that were wishing that you had branded differently and the buy-price might reflect that.

I use the "-" a lot for my domain names. But honestly domain name has so little to do with ranking anymore. I outrank most EMD's with 0 of my kw's in my domain name.

Thanks a lot for the advice guys. Think I'm just gonna try adding something to the EMD.
Though its true that domains with "-" can be ranked but like 3CardMonte said, idk what the future holds.

Use 24 or 365 in the end of the domain.. that's a nice touch if the emd is taken.

Personal choice IMHO. If your EMD is taken and you have your mind set to rank for that particular term, you have to do what you have to do. I always prefer the non-dashed domains but as I said, it is a personal choice.

A couple ago I bought 15 domains (exact match) and developed all of them in a similar way, and backlinked all of them in a similar way. They were different niches, so obviously has different levels of competition.

2 of them has a " - " the rest didn't.

1 year later, about 12 of the 15 were ranking on the first or second page, and the two with a " - " were out of the top fifty positions.

This is obviously not a watertight test, but it did give me some sort of an indication, especially knowing that the competition for those 2 websites was not difficult.

Is a .edu or .info domain a bad idea?

i agree with before. no one likes a dashed domain...

I have to ask - this is my first step into IM and I'm looking for a niche site to start marketing. I've seen like 40K+ global monthly searches for a key term with no competition except a couple of incidental links like wikipedia articles etc but the EMD has been registered by some bloody website company. If I stick a "best" at the start of the search term (bestxxxxxxxx.com) in the domain will that harm my chances of ranking well?