Hyphenated Domain Names??

[Brokerstar]

Hi guys

I've been looking into this just by searhing the web and I'm comming across differing opinions.

I want to know if Hyphenated, two word domain names rank better for two word terms that none?

For example would poker-babes.com do better SEO wise for the term poker babes than pokerbabes.com???

I read that Google treats dots and hyphens like spaces so these should do better.

I intend on doing some tests but thought I'd ask you guys if you have already had any experience/ sucess with this?

Regards

Broker

[xYassassinYx]

Personally iv had success with domains which have included a hyphen, id much rather have the domain without it but sometimes the choices are limited for the domain you want.

Anyway, i purchased the domain and its doing extremely well - mostly due to the amount of content and updates i do on it imo.

I rank higher than alot of the exact matched domains which dont have a hyphen, i guess it depends on your site and how much effort you put it.

In my opinion any domain can rank high if you put enough effort in, well at least from my experience this has certainly been the case

just my 2 cents

[OPC]

Contrary to what I've read on Poker Affiliate University, my strong belief is that hyphenated-domain-names are a closer natural match for key phrases than mashedtogetherdomainnames would be.

The hyphen suggests highly related words according to google's commentary. That being said, it would make sense for targeting key phrases using hyphens.

[themike537]

Based on my experiences poker-babes.com would not be as good as pokerbabes.com for the term "poker babes", putting all else aside. That's not to say that poker-babes.com couldn't rank, it's just saying that it would take more work than pokerbabes.com.

[pokermonger]

There has been an exact match "boost" (for lack of a better word) for domains without dashes. This may not last forever, but it is still in play as far as I know. Mike hit the nail on the head though when he said "all else aside". There is so much that goes into a web site that it is almost impossible to compare 100%. In my own experience, sites without a dash in the main domain come out of some of the Google filters faster than ones with dashes.

All that being said, if you do your job correctly from an SEO standpoint you should be able to accomplish everything with a domain with a dash in it that you can otherwise. Do a search for poker seo. It took what seemed like forever for pokerseo.org to pass poker-seo.com in the rankings. But, what I take from the two rankings is that they are both ranked where they belong (top 2 results) and both of those guys are among the best seo guys in the world. So the long term key is seo. The domain is just a small part of the equation.

[321]

Based on my experiences poker-babes.com would not be as good as pokerbabes.com for the term "poker babes", putting all else aside. That's not to say that poker-babes.com couldn't rank, it's just saying that it would take more work than pokerbabes.com.

That particular term would not be a good test because "babes" is a problematic term (considered adult), but in general hyphens have very close to zero negative in terms of exact match searches, but where they are greatly superior is if you compare two domains like that for searches involving one of the two words, but not both. All things being equal, the hyphenated version should do better for [word poker] and [babes word].

Register both somedomain.com and some-domain.com and use the hyphenated one (assuming the two words are related to a lot of broad searches).

Owning only a hyphenated version is problematic as you will lose type-ins, but normally if a non-hyphenated version is available, so is the hyphenated version.

[Michael Martinez]

The domain name is virtually irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. The search engines use hundreds of factors to determine rankings. You're not going to get much of a boost or loss by including or excluding keywords in the domain name or by favoring hyphens (or eschewing them).

At the end of the day, your rankings will reflect not only what you do, but what your competitors do and what the search engines do with all the data they have accumulated about your sites and your competitors' sites.

Don't worry about the domain name. And don't waste your time setting up tests. It's not nearly as easy to test a search algorithm as many people seem to think. You have to factor out many potential influences on rankings and compile statistically valid data samples. It's a very tedious, time-consuming process.

[Ridge]

Don't worry about the domain name. And don't waste your time setting up tests. It's not nearly as easy to test a search algorithm as many people seem to think. You have to factor out many potential influences on rankings and compile statistically valid data samples. It's a very tedious, time-consuming process.

That might be the first post of yours I disagree with. Testing is essential to SEO and expanding one's own understanding of SEO. Now, I know what you are saying ,But testing, testing, and more testing of theories is essential to basic understanding of SEO. Even if you are new to all of this.

To expand on this thought, webmasters, even ones with limited experience should be running test sites all the time. Testing not only basic SEO (accepted theories) but also testing within a specific niche. Of course I guess we are treading a fine line between SEO testing, and market testing. Overall, everyone should be constantly testing even if they are new to the business.

Now that I think about it, I guess I see what you are trying to say. I just don;t want anyone to think testing is a waste of time. I'm sure your first 100 SEO tests were not all that great and you learned form your mistakes. As did I and pretty much everyone else I know. We should actually start a thread on some simple SEO test and marketing test anyone can run. Sort of a "how to guide"

As with all experiments, you have to account for variables/influences and set up multiple tests. Then when you are done you should do it all again all the while recording every scrape of data.

For example, I know several things about VB Forums that I found out threw some testing, simple reactions the SE's had when I did simple things. This is info I would have never known about unless I tried some testing. Same thing for Wordpress, simple things you can try. Of course the domain, links, position of the sun, etc all factored in. But some things are universal aren't they?

[Squizzel]

i would use hyphenated domains for spammy sites that wont be your primary site.

For your main sites that are designed for the user you want a brandable not not enter-keyword-here-now.com because 1) no one will remember it 2) it doesnt ooze credibility. It basically says, i cant afford mykeyword.com so i got my-keyword.com instead.

Also, although google interprets the - as a space. Exact match domains like, PokerBonusCodes.com will have better ability to rank then poker-bonus-codes.com which isnt seen as an exact match. This is just one of many factors and isnt the be all and end all. If you have pokerbonuscodes.com and rank 1 for it, id say your more likely to get sitelinks then if you had poker-bonus-codes.com - I havent really tested this, this is just from my observations. I may be wrong. But anyway, im not really a fan of hyphenated domains, unless your building low value sites on purpose.

[Trikkur]

I think Michael was saying that it's almost impossible to test a hyphenated domain vs a non hyphenated domain. It would take so much time and effort to keep the variable consistent among the 2 sites that testing is pretty much useless.