27 replies to this topic

[High Rank]

I have a client who has a domain name with multiple hyphens in the URL, as he was advised by a previous company to pick a domain with keywords in it. I'm thinking that too many hyphens will prevent a site from ranking well as Google looks at these types of domains as a form of spam. His site has 5. The site is roughly 5 months old, so a few more months before it starts ranking well in Google anyways. The site has quality, original content and actually gets a decent amount of traffic from Google (no highly competitive search terms of course due to the sandbox), has a good amount of high quality links from related content sites and a few authority sites and comes up first page for all his targeted keywords on all the allintitle, allinanchor and allintext searches on Google. He's a personal injury attorney so competition is pretty tough. If it weren't for the domain, I'd have no doubt the site will rank high at the 9 month mark (that's been the magic number for me anyways with new sites). I've never worked on a site that had more than 2 dashes in the domain name so this has never been an issue for me. Anyone have any feedback on dealing with this? Suggestions would also be great.

[qwerty]

The domain name has very very little to do with rankings. Google has implied that domains with keywords and hyphens "look" spammy, but that doesn't mean that they are. It certainly shouldn't give you any reason to think that the algo would penalize a site just because there are hyphens in its domain name.

However, I've never seen any reason to think that there's a significant ranking benefit in getting keywords into a domain name, and it's clear that hyphens make it harder for people to remember the domain name and communicate it to others.

So forget the search engines and just think about how the domain name is supposed to represent the business. Is it memorable, easy to type, easy to relate to what the site's about, or does it make the whole site seem like some fly-by-night business designed to benefit from a search engine algo (that doesn't even exist)?

[High Rank]

Bob,

Thanks for the reply. I agree with you that keywords in the domain are not that important in terms of ranking well. I also think the domain represents his business well, is pretty easy to remember so that's fine (although I prefer not to have all the hyphens) and the site content is helpful to his clients. My biggest concern is getting his site to rank well and I know Google is changing the face of what they consider spam all the time. There's a thread on Matt Cutts blog that talks about Google not penalizing for hyphens: mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/ but this was from August 05. It wasn't considered spam according to Matt then but things are changing all the time. I just want to make sure I don't steer my client the wrong way. This guy drops big bucks on pay per click on Google and I want to help reduce that spend by getting his site to rank well organically. I'd rather not have to start the aging delay with a new site if I don't have and from what your telling me you don't think that's necessarry.

[Jill]

The engines would never simply apply a global penalty to all domains that have multiple hyphens or keyword phrases.

At worst, they'd put them under more scrutiny, which of course is no big deal if you're not doing anything you wouldn't want to search engine to know about.

[High Rank]

Thanks for the feedback Jill.

[SeoCommander]

The domain name has very very little to do with rankings. Google has implied that domains with keywords and hyphens "look" spammy, but that doesn't mean that they are. It certainly shouldn't give you any reason to think that the algo would penalize a site just because there are hyphens in its domain name.

However, I've never seen any reason to think that there's a significant ranking benefit in getting keywords into a domain name, and it's clear that hyphens make it harder for people to remember the domain name and communicate it to others.

So forget the search engines and just think about how the domain name is supposed to represent the business. Is it memorable, easy to type, easy to relate to what the site's about, or does it make the whole site seem like some fly-by-night business designed to benefit from a search engine algo (that doesn't even exist)?

I have to disagree. Google also says that participating in link exchange is not necsessary because it will not boost rankings; we know for sure that a clean link exchange campaign is the first step on SEO.

In my experience, having keywords in the domain is important if you know how to use them.
If we want to have a positive effect we must have into consideration many other factors like the ammount of keywords we are going to use to build our domain. Hyphens are the best approach to feed keywords to the spiders as they are better accepted to separate words.

Just take a look at this example:

If we want to position a website under the keyword "seo expert" which one of the following will tell more to the users and spiders?

- www.marketplace.com
- www.seo-expert.com

Or just question yourself... where else do you expect to find microsoft's website? Isn't that www.microsoft.com? Googlebot is programmed to act as a regular visitor will do in many aspects; it will give importance to simple things like those things that we ovelook because our eyes are trained to pass over the obvious things... "microsoft? where else!! microsoft.com"

The main purpose of using a domain instead of an IP is to have a word or phrase that anyone can remember and easily associate to our product.

By using the keyword as part of the domain we are making our site appear as an authority page; the rest will be co-relating keywords within the website by creating keyword-related documents and bla, bla, bla.

This said, the right question is... Can you please tell us how many characters including hyphens does the domain has?

Regards,

[chrishirst]

If we want to position a website under the keyword "seo expert" which one of the following will tell more to the users and spiders?

- www.marketplace.com
- www.seo-expert.com

Neither. a few threads on  "keyword url"[/hr]

The main purpose of using a domain instead of an IP is to have a word or phrase that anyone can remember and easily associate to our product.

Rubbish! do you think that DNS was invented to improve SEO??????

By using the keyword as part of the domain we are making our site appear as an authority page; the rest will be co-relating keywords within the website by creating keyword-related documents and bla, bla, bla.

Nope. see point 1.

I have to disagree. Google also says that participating in link exchange is not necsessary because it will not boost rankings; we know for sure that a clean link exchange campaign is the first step on SEO.

Nope nobody knows for sure and a "link exchange campaign" is absolutely NOT the first step


Maybe you should be reading the [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php/topic/833-tips-for-new-seos/]Tips for Newbies[/url] thread

[Jill]

Google also says that participating in link exchange is not necsessary because it will not boost rankings;

Where did Google say that? I've sure never seen that written anywhere by them.

As far as my recollection goes, they say don't participate in LINKING SCHEMES designed to subvert (or artificially inflate) link popularity.

That's not anywhere near the same thing as what you've said that they've said. It's interesting how people hear/read what they want to hear/read.

The main purpose of using a domain instead of an IP is to have a word or phrase that anyone can remember and easily associate to our product.

How does a keyword in the domain make that domain easily rememberable. Would Google have a better URL if it was www.search-engine.com? I think not. Would Amazon have been smarter to simply be www.book-store.com? I think not.

There's nothing inherently brandable about someone who names their company/website using a keyword. It simply makes them one more in a long line of generic nobodys.

[SeoCommander]

Hi Guys:

This is great!! Polemic is also good for SEO...
To start many thanx to the moderators for the welcoming... I want to apologize if anyone felt like I was chasing a moderators around, is just that our words are not always the last word. As a good professional I always accept comments, suggestions and toughs from others, i'm not selfish and I wish you guys are professionals like me. Of course replying to a thread at 2:45AM has it's implications... I was tired and had no time to explain better my point.
But anyhow...

1. Where does Google says that about link exchange? See this address www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html

How does a keyword in the domain make that domain easily rememberable. Would Google have a better URL if it was www.search-engine.com? I think not. Would Amazon have been smarter to simply be www.book-store.com? I think not.

2. Their company names are already branded...

GOOGLE = search engine
AMAZON = store.

Unles we have the money to brand our companies is better to relate it to a keyword.
Google made a big investment buying a company called www.appliedsemantics.com/ to make their index better and close to human behavior. Read some (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics)about Semantics and the current project of the World Wide Web Consortium called Semantic Web going to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_web .

Rubbish! do you think that DNS was invented to improve SEO??????

3. It was invented to associate technology to something more understandable to humans. See what wikipedia says by going to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dns . Same as the Internet that was invented as a way to transport data between universities. And please, I wouldn't say that any of yur words are rubbish because I respect others. Hope you are not taking this personal.
I don't want to get banned, I just want to collaborate and learn from you, same as I probably have someth areas where I can certainly collaborate. I promise that in my future postings i'll be more polite when commenting a moderator...

4. About link exchange as being the first step of SEO campaign... you are right, I was wrong ....... or better... falling asleep. jeje

Maybe you should be reading the [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php/topic/833-tips-for-new-seos/]Tips for Newbies[/url] thread

5. Don't be so rude... The Newbies thread latest post is dated Aug 31 2004, 12:50 PM. It has been a couple of changes since that time 'till now. I think is time to update...

Having keywords within the domain still works for Inktomi but when it comes to Google it seems that they are applying some aging, but at long term (depending on many factors) it will work as well. I can backup my words with real examples...

1. Olivier Dufez had made a good research in this matter, go to www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/seo/wpn-4-20041209ShouldYouUseTargetedKeywordsinURL.html
2. As per the Hyphens as separators, go to www.prweaver.com/blog/2004/08/26/2-hyphen-and-underscore
3. Another article about keywords in domains, go to searchengineoptimism.com/SEO_Tutorial/Domain_name_keywords.html

I'm not saying you guys are wrong, i'm just telling that you are probably underestimating the good plus of having keywords within your URL.

Does having a domain with keywords will hurt your rankings? So, why not use it?

I have an idea... why don't you guys open a new section about SEMANTICS, there is too much to learn as it is the current technology Google is using, that goes for me too!!

Edited by SeoCommander, 18 March 2006 - 03:39 PM.

[Jill]

1. Where does Google says that about link exchange? See this address www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html

I'm still not seeing it. Can you paste the relevant wording?

Their company names are already branded...

Not when they first started. C'mon you can do better than that!

The Newbies thread latest post is dated Aug 31 2004, 12:50 PM. It has been a couple of changes since that time 'till now. I think is time to update...

What specifically is out of date there? As I'd want to update it. It's mostly pointing out articles, many of which are up to date...but yes, some are older. Just read the newer ones, if that suits you better. I'm sure you and many others can still learn a lot from the articles posted, even if you've been doing SEO for awhile. Pointing that thread out is not meant to be a slam.

1. Olivier Dufez had made a good research in this matter, go to www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/seo/wpn-4-20041209ShouldYouUseTargetedKeywordsinURL.html

Oh, an article specifically from 2004 is the last word? Not to mention the source...webpronews is not really where I get my definitive answers on SEO since 90% of the articles there are simply untrue. Who the heck is Olivier Dufez anyway?
OFFTOPIC:

(Poor guy must have been called dufus a lot growing up!)

[SeoCommander]

He could be a nobody but he certainly did something that we had never did before... he experimented with URLs to get to this point.

I don't want to argue with you, It looks like your are taking this personal. Common, we are proffessionals, provide us with some real world examples the same as I'm doing; because you guys don't know me is good to show you that I'm not the only one who thinks that way. If you can do that I'll be the first one to recognize my mistake.
Unless someone can proves with a fact like that one, I'll be agreeing with him.

As for "being the last word" i didn't say that, please read my signature, it's been there since I started posting in this forum. From my side consider this thread closed.

Regards,

[qwerty]

I'm afraid a test that uses a nonsense word is ok for checking to see if a given element gets indexed, but since there's no competition for such a word, any tests to see if something helps to rank for that word just don't make sense.

Look at my first post in this thread. I do believe that if you put hyphens between keywords in a URL, the search engine will be able to parse them and they will count. But the original question was about domain names, not file and directory names, like in the article. When it comes to putting keywords and hyphens in domain names, you have to think about whether the boost you might get in rankings is worth it compared to what you're going to lose in branding. IMO, it's not worth it. It looks bad, and it's harder to communicate the domain name to others.

[SeoCommander]

Hi qwerty:

You made a good point. I'm leaving home. Let me do a little research and I'll get back.

Regards,

[Jill]

Unless someone can proves with a fact like that one, I'll be agreeing with him.

Be my guest. You're free to believe whomever and whatever you want.

[Denyse]

Hey Jill,

Olivier Dufez is the owner and webmaster of webrankinfo.com and is considered by many in Europe to be a bit of the french version of you (in my opinion not quite in your league, but that's me). Anyway, to my knowledge Olivier tends to agree with you on most things SEO, I have certainly never heard him propose anything that you would be vehemently opposed to.

Like you said, that article was written in 2004 -- and in this business two years is an eternity.