The Effect of Hyphen in a domain name on SEO
It has been a long debated topic about whether to register a hyphenated domain or simply without hyphen between the keywords. I have found on may discussions where SEO experts claim to say that hyphens are considered as “space” by search engine bots and its better to have a hyphenated domain name.
I have tried out optimizing one of my website with and without the hyphen and come to a conclusion after much testing that a domain name WITHOUT the hyphen seem to perform way higher than the hyphenated one.
The various advantages of not using a hyphen in domain names are:
- It gives more credibility as most older and authority websites do not use hyphen as a trend
- Search engine algorithms are advanced enough to identify two separate words without a space
- The hyphen might break your keyword and thereby pushing you below in SERPs
- It seems to be a myth that hyphenated domain names could improve your SERP
- A hyphenated domain name is not the best option to “brand” a domain
I would strongly suggest to go for a non hyphenated domain name and in case you have an option of both the options available, to be more sure, you could get both of them registered and one redirected to your parent website.
If you have a different opinion or view point, kindly share with me and I am open to learning!
You can search "Content Writing" in Google. And you can find top site that is hyphened.
Hello,
I agree to the fact that it shows first in ranking in this case. But have you considered the following facts:
1. There are two domains in competition – contentwritingindia.com and content-writing-india.com
2. The link backs to hyphened domain is 178 and to without hyphen is only 90
3. Anchor texts, domain age, BLD, Link backs and PR does matter too
NOTE: the idea is to diffrenciate between two fresh domains, un optimized and which one to choose from.
Hope the motive of the article is conveyed.
appriciate your opnion.
Cheers, Josh
I don't understand what BLD means.
If you consider about Domain Age, then I think contentwritingindia.com will come as more older.
However, I'm thankful for your reply and hope to continue reading your post and to provide continuous comments. I might need any more suggestion regarding SEO from you in future.
Hey,
Am sorry, BLD means Back links to Domain. Another factor is BLP – Backlinks to Page.
Its a combination of several factors that determine the ranking at the end of the day.
Main for them are:
1. Page rank of website
2. Number of backlinks
3. Presence of keyowrd in the URL or domain
4. keywords, title and description
5. Number of BL to Page
6. Number of BL to Domain
7. domain age
one of the best Keyword research tool called market samurai will give you more insight if you have used it before, you could try it for free, it will give the realtime factors that are taking a link higher to another one.
In a nutshell, if you have all in place, the domain name having the keyword is an advantage.
Cheers
Josh
This was on doubt i wanted to clarify before registering my new niche website domain name. Thanks for such crystal clarification. Appreciate your efforts here.
All the best.
For branding I agree that hyphenating is not ok, but for ranking in google I must disagree. I was not so smart to register the hyphenated domain and a competitor did it a few weeks after my website was launched. Now he stays a few places above me whatever I do. My webpages are far better as SEO is concerned, I have pagerank 2, they still have 0. I regret not registering the hyphneated domain every day. My website is just 3 months old so maybe I am still in the sandbox and will push through within a few months.
Hey Aschwin,
I agree to you on both the points. It does vary from niche to niche in some cases too.. But My advice from all the years with SEO, Blogs and websites – It all depends on the quality of the content on your website. build a blog and continue to add more quality content and gradually it will do more good and better that your competitor who has static content and less activity.
cheers
Josh
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