Question about domains with 2 or 3 hyphens
-
I have a client who has 3 domains in the following format:
keywordkeywordkeywordkeyword.co.uk
keyword-keyword-keyword-london.co.uk
And needs advice on the best one to use.
The client is leaning towards the one with 3 hyphens because it has more keywords but I am a bit worried about using it at the risk of it looking too spammy because of the hyphens.
So my question is will 3 hyphens as in the above example cause anything negative in terms of SEO? We will not be doing any black-hat seo tactics but even so will 3 hyphens cause any problems or is it safer to go with just two hyphens?
And secondly the client asked if Google can understand different words or is it better to have hyphens so Google can understand that there are different words?
-
Totally agree with Moosa's suggestion, even for just one reason:
It looks spammy and is associated with spammers, this is one of those things that can make or break website conversion.
-
Google have the ability to read and separate words accordingly so hyphens are not really a need!
As far as choosing the domains is concern, if I would be at your place I would have turn down all the domains as I always keep certain things in mind when choosing a website URL
- Google either give no or very low weight to keywords within the domain, so if you have “pet store” in your domain name it alone will not really help you get better rankings for pet store! You still need to go for all other SEO practices to achieve that target.
- URL should be a name that people can easily remember so that they can mention easily if they want in their day to day conversations. It’s always easy to say “Moz” then “Search Engine and Digital Marketing agency Moz”
- Too many hyphens in the domain are normally of low quality or at least it’s an assumption because back in the time (to an extent still) these type of domains are normally used by spammers
My advice would be to use a domain name that is short, catchy and relevant to your niche (not necessary to have a keyword in it) and then invest on building a brand name so that you can get natural links which is not really possible with too many keywords I the domain name.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi
To answer your last question first, yes, Google can generally understand different words joined together, but hyphenated is better for human readability.
Regarding your domain name choice, it really depends what keywords you are using in the domain as to what will work the best and what may or may not appear spammy. The spammy feel, if there is one, will really be to do with how people read the domain - and also maybe how long-winded a long domain name can be to type in.
Re Google, I'm not sure you are going to get much advantage from an SEO perspective by using multiple keywords in your domain, especially in the move towards semantic search, but as I say, it really depends on what those keywords are.
I hope that helps,
Peter
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why is my site stuck on page 2 even though it has higher DA?
Hi, I'm just trying to figure out why we're still not on first page for 'criminal lawyer sydney' (stuck on result #15) - I checked out SEO Moz and I can see the Domain Authority for our site 'criminal-lawyer.com.au' - is at 23 which is higher than other sites that rank on first page of this search. I've done a bunch of technical stuff on the site too - so if anyone can give any insight on why this could be happening it would be much appreicated. Thanks!
Local Listings | | SEOByTheMinute0 -
I have a question regarding what package I should get
I work at an agency, we have a client that has 20 locations (all different websites and google business listings). We are trying to pick the best and easiest package for each location. We are trying to improve their SEO and ranking and their Google My Business pages. Can you explain the packages that you have to offer and which package you think would be the best fit.
Local Listings | | groovehive0 -
2 Domains
Hi, one of my clients owns a dental practice. The business is split into 2 parts. One is general dentistry and the other in cosmetic dentistry. They are both aimed at different markets. The question is, should we have 1 website with all the details for the business under, or could we have two domains and promote both sites differently. Does anyone see any issues with the address being the same etc? Thanks Ade
Local Listings | | popcreativeltd0 -
We lost ranking for our domain what could be reason?
Hello, From last 5 months our domain ranking dropped down a lot, main keywords are also dropped, form 1st page to 6 or 7 .
Local Listings | | Sanjayth
can anyone help to fix this issue ? Any one can help for this query, Then Please reply. Thanx, in Advance, Falguni0 -
Questions about On-site Location Content for Service Area Businesses
Hello all, I've got a couple tough questions about how to go about creating locations pages for my business, and I'm wondering if you can give me some much needed direction. I'm about to launch a professional house cleaning business which will serve Philadelphia and a couple surrounding counties. I plan on aggressively expanding to other large cities, and while I plan on building a Philly locations page, I'm unsure of how to rank organically for all the individual towns/municipalities in the surrounding counties in the middle without having a physical business location there. Should I even hope to rank for these smaller towns? Would a page where the county is in the h1 tag, and say the top 10 largest towns in that county listed underneath in h2 tags help me reach searchers in those top 10 largest towns? How about paying ~$100 for a physical street address in each county and submitting that NAP to local directories of the larger towns, as well as getting a Google My Business page and using the service radius option? Is there some other strategy that I'm missing? I'm just at a loss for how to compete without AdWords for the people searching in the smaller towns when my competition is businesses with NAP/citations and their main page dedicated solely to that smaller town. Google seems to have made it even harder with Pigeon coming out recently. I serve those areas just as readily as my competition, yet the customer will predominantly see them SOLELY due to the fact that most of my competition are incapable of serving or choose not to serve wide areas. I understand that these businesses are dedicating a lot of resources to those small towns, but it does seem a sad fact that it doesn't mean they're any higher quality of a company than mine, yet they get a leg up. ANY advice or direction would be greatly appreciated, and would come with a huge internet bear hug.
Local Listings | | PTHerrington0 -
Why would a domain rank well in some markets and poorly in others?
We are having an issue with our SERP results. Basically here is what’s happening. We offer training in 47 cities. Our main sales page is [http://example.com/product/city-name]. Whenever we change our location preferences in Google, and that URL format is the landing page for our main 3 keywords, we rank no worse than 15. Most of those are on the first page. However, if that is not the landing page in the SERPs, we rank poorly. Depending on which keyword is used, one of three URLs will ALWAYS appear instead of the desired city-specific landing page, and we rank somewhere between pages 6 and 9. The other landing pages, depending on which keyword is used, are http://example.com (home page), http://example.com/product (without the city), or http://example.com/product/san-francisco (regardless of how close this is). Out of the 141 keywords, there have been between 9-25 keywords that have this issue. Having all 3 of these keywords in the top 10 for each city is the number one priority from our CEO. We have noticed if a page starts moving down the ranks, once it goes past 15, the landing page changes. Anyone have any ideas what could be causing this, or how to fix it? Any insight into this is much appreciated!
Local Listings | | PM_Academy0 -
Local domains vs. subfolders?
I am in the process of rebranding a B2B website for a UK company that has been established on a .net address for ten years. The CMS is Wordpress. The company has previously had localised content on .net/de, .net/au extensions for various regions where they have offices (US, Oz, various Europe.) I am getting varied and at times conflicting feedback from the creative agency, inhouse digital staff, and IT about the best way to proceed with the new website and in particular its future local language versions. Question 1: If we change the .net website to a .com address, will 301 redirects safeguard our SEO real estate? Question 2: we own the .com extension and have been using it for some back office stuff. It was purchased because it was advised that the .net did not carry much credibility in the US, is this correct? Question 3: If we change the .net to the .com which is hosted in the US, will we wipe our search rankings on Google for the UK and non-US locations? I saw this post and wondered:
Local Listings | | LConnect
http://moz.com/community/q/uk-rankings-disappeared-after-us-website-launch Question 4: is hosting the regional site best done on a local domain (we own a bunch) or does that not really matter? Question 5: If we use a WP plug in and just use subfolders for translating and localising content (US, Germany, Australia), what is the best way of serving that content for local PR? Sorry about the many questions 🙂 Guni0 -
How is a competitor franchise ranking all for all 3 Local results with unclaimed G+ pages in a search for the national corporation?
My company is an individual franchise of a national corporation - every franchise is operates as [National Corporate Brand Name] + a chosen descriptor such as "Premiere" or the names of the owners such as "Smith Jones". A logged-out Google search for just the national brand name returns the corporate website first, followed by the website of a competing local franchise and 3 Local listings for their offices. These listings are all unclaimed and unverified on Google+ and have no reviews or posts. The corporate Twitter is next, followed by my franchise's website. The corporate Facebook is the last result on the page. How can this competing franchise rank for all 3 Local listings with unclaimed pages? My company operates several more offices than the competitor in the same area and I regularly post to their G+ pages which I verified several months ago. Is it because the competitor's website just holds significantly more weight in Google than our own? A search for the brand name + the town where our offices are in does usually return our Local listing pages, but that limits our reach to those specific towns. Anyone have any insight on this?
Local Listings | | WGW0