undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Using hyphenated sub-domains or non-hyphenated sub-domains? What is the question! I Any takers?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Using hyphenated sub-domains or non-hyphenated sub-domains? What is the question! I Any takers?

Technical SEO
4
11
7.7k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • RobMay
    RobMay last edited by Jun 21, 2011, 1:05 PM

    For our corporate business level domain, we are exploring using a hyphenated sub-domain foir a project.

    Something like www.go-figure.extreme.com

    I thought from a user perspective it seems cluttered. The domain length might also be an issue with the new Algorithm big G has launched in recent past.

    I know with past experience, hyphenated domains usually take longer to index, as they are used by spammers more frequently and can take longer to get out of the supplementary index.

    Our company site has over 90 million viewers / year, so our brand is well established and traffic isn't an issue. This is for a corporate level project and I didn't have the answer!

    Will this work? anyone have any experience testing this. Any thoughts will help!

    Thanks, Rob

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • dcmike
      dcmike Subscriber @Thos003 last edited by Sep 13, 2011, 4:28 PM Sep 13, 2011, 4:13 PM

      I agree - it was Google itself that suggested hyphenating keywords in url's.

      Example - I was just using the Moz keyword tool on a site named sellmybusinesscolorado.com. The search term it was tuned to was "sell business colorado". The tool, and so likely the bots, did not recognize those very words in that long URL. Had it been hyphenated - they would have been recognized.

      What brought me here was - is hyphenating, itself, non kosher in a sub domain? Thomas, coincidentally - the subdomain I was pondering is pest-control.straza.com. He is a business broker that sells a lot of pest control businesses. I also would do medical.straza.com. These subs will deal with their namesakes as if they were the only businesses they sell.

      Google recognizes the hyphen as the universal word separator. I stopped using underbars ten years ago - a nasty habit I learned from programmers.

      I think it is more the ABUSE of a good thing, as it always is, that should be avoided.

      ........... I didn't name that site, by the way ;-]

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Oversteer
        Oversteer Subscriber @RobMay last edited by Jun 21, 2011, 8:13 PM Jun 21, 2011, 8:13 PM

        I agree (FWIW)

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Thos003
          Thos003 @RobMay last edited by Jun 22, 2011, 10:43 AM Jun 21, 2011, 7:44 PM

          There will be no SEO fall out due to hyphen.

          It's a personal preference.

          I like: footballsport.mysite.com

          I don't like: football-sport.mysite.com

          No hyphen just seems to be more common. Users may get confused only upon remembering the subdomain. "uh... I think there is a silent hyphen in that URL...??? Or was it no hyphen?"

          So if you use football-sport.mysite.com then redirect footballsport.mysite.com to football-sport.mysite.com.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • RobMay
            RobMay @RobMay last edited by Jun 21, 2011, 2:14 PM Jun 21, 2011, 2:14 PM

            Thanks. It was a little of both in terms of concerns. I didn't want indexing issues, and the hyphen just threw me off -  as well as it impacting the usability of the page. As long as they hyphen will work in the sub-domain I'm good to go. I didn't want any issues later 🙂 Thanks to all who replied!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Oversteer
              Oversteer Subscriber @RobMay last edited by Jun 21, 2011, 1:55 PM Jun 21, 2011, 1:55 PM

              I suppose that we're not understanding your concern. Is the concern over incorporating a keyword or is the question about whether a hyphen has negative consequences?

              If it's a keyword issue you can use keyword.example.com or key-word.example.com. No difference from an SEO perspective. It's more about convenience/usability (ease of conveying the address via various media).

              I doubt that one dash will cause indexation/ranking issues. I don't see this as an issue.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • RobMay
                RobMay @Thos003 last edited by Jun 21, 2011, 1:35 PM Jun 21, 2011, 1:35 PM

                this is actuallly for the sub-domain, not the primary domain.

                so football.mysite.com as opposed to something like football-sport.mysite.com

                It's the hyphen that's throwing me out of whack..

                Ideas? and thanks for the insights~!!

                Oversteer RobMay Thos003 4 Replies Last reply Jun 21, 2011, 8:13 PM Reply Quote 0
                • RobMay
                  RobMay @Oversteer last edited by Jun 21, 2011, 1:34 PM Jun 21, 2011, 1:34 PM

                  Sorry - should have said "not very friendly!"

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Thos003
                    Thos003 last edited by Jun 22, 2011, 10:47 AM Jun 21, 2011, 1:34 PM

                    You shouldn't experience any problems with a hyphen in the domain name. Exact Match domains seem to rank better, but most likely not directly associated with the exact match but the domain history and content. Even with a hyphen you get a close match. I have seen hyphen domains rank just fine.

                    The only concern I would have is consistency within the domain name. You may throw of users by adding a hyphen to an unhyphenated domain. Personally I would opt against using the hyphen. People have learned to read through domain names at this point.

                    If you do go with the hyphen make sure you redirect the unhyphenated version to the hyphenated version.

                    RobMay dcmike 2 Replies Last reply Jun 21, 2011, 1:35 PM Reply Quote 1
                    • RobMay
                      RobMay @Oversteer last edited by Jun 21, 2011, 1:33 PM Jun 21, 2011, 1:33 PM

                      I agree. I'm still on the fence about the hyphenated sub-domain. I can't find too many sites that actually practice this technique. i'm looking for some references online.

                      This domain won't be spoken over the phone, and from a usability perspective, but very flashy r friendly.

                      I wanted to use something like say football.mysite.com instead of football-sport.mycompany.com

                      i'm still perplexed!! LOL

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Oversteer
                        Oversteer Subscriber last edited by Jun 22, 2011, 10:47 AM Jun 21, 2011, 1:22 PM

                        Avoid multiple hyphens (eg key-word-stuffed-subdomain.example.com). Your example only has one-not a concern. The SEs are able to read domains/subdomains with spacers or not. Not a concern there either. In the example you've provided, the issue is more about usability. If you ever have to speak a URL over the phone it'll be much easier without the dash.

                        RobMay 2 Replies Last reply Jun 21, 2011, 1:34 PM Reply Quote 1
                        • 1 / 1
                        1 out of 11
                        • First post
                          1/11
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • ghesta

                          In writing the url, it is better to use the language used by the people of my country or English?

                          We speak Persian and all people search in Persian on Google. But I read in some sources that the url should be in English. Please tell me which language to use for url writing?
                          For example, I brought down two models: 1fb0e134-10dc-4737-904f-bfdf07143a98-image.png https://ghesta.ir/blog/how-to-become-rich/
                          2)https://ghesta.ir/blog/چگونه-پولدار-شویم/

                          Technical SEO | Jun 10, 2021, 10:32 PM | ghesta
                          0
                        • jarydcat1

                          Merge 2 websites into one, using a non-existing, new domain.

                          I need to merge https://www.WebsiteA.com and https://www.WebsiteB.com to a fresh new domain (with no content) https://www.WebsiteC.com. I want to do it the best way to keep existing SEO juice. Website A is the companies home page and built with Wordpress Website B is the company product page and built with Wordpress Website C will be the new site containing both website A and B, utilizing Wordpress also. What is the best way to do this? I have research a lot and keep hitting walls on how to do it. It's a little trickier because it's two different domains going to a brand new domain. Thanks

                          Technical SEO | Mar 12, 2018, 9:22 PM | jarydcat1
                          0
                        • kuchenchef

                          Redirect typo domains

                          Hi, What's the "correct" way of redirecting typo domains? DNS A record goes to the same ip address as the correct domain name Then 301 redirects for each typo domain in the .htaccess Subdomains on typo urls still redirect to www or should they redirect to the subdomain on the correct url in case the subdomain exists?

                          Technical SEO | Jul 10, 2015, 12:18 PM | kuchenchef
                          0
                        • findwell

                          Does image domain name matter when using a CDN?

                          Has anyone does studies on using a different CDN domain name for images on a site? Here is an example: or ![](<a)http://cdn.mydomain.com/image.jpg> mydomain.com ranks highly and many images show up in Google/Bing image searches. Is there any actual data that says that using your real domain name for the CDN has benefits versus the default domain name provided by the CDN provider? On the surface, it feels like it would, but I haven't experimented with it.

                          Technical SEO | Jun 13, 2013, 4:20 AM | findwell
                          0
                        • media-surfer

                          Umlaut in domain

                          Hi, My client wants to expand it's business to Germany and logically we need a domain name to match. We've found a great one and regsiterd several variants to it. However I just found out that in Germany it is possible (while here it's not) to register a domain with an umlaut. My question is: will google assign more value to: schädlinge.de than schadlinge.de when users search for schädlinge? If yes, how large will the difference be? (I will use an umlaut in the title etc) Kind regards,
                          Jason.

                          Technical SEO | Sep 6, 2012, 2:52 PM | media-surfer
                          0
                        • fthead9

                          What is the best method to block a sub-domain, e.g. staging.domain.com/ from getting indexed?

                          Now that Google considers subdomains as part of the TLD I'm a little leery of testing robots.txt with something like: staging.domain.com
                          User-agent: *
                          Disallow: / in fear it might get the www.domain.com blocked as well. Has anyone had any success using robots.txt to block sub-domains? I know I could add a meta robots tag to the staging.domain.com pages but that would require a lot more work.

                          Technical SEO | Oct 6, 2011, 10:55 PM | fthead9
                          0
                        • anand2010

                          How to remove a sub domain from Google Index!

                          Hello, I have a website having many subdomains having same copy of content i think its harming my SEO for that site since abc and xyz sub domains do have same contents. Thus i require to know i have already deleted required subdomain DNS RECORDS now how to have those pages removed from Google index as  well ? The DNS Records no more exists for those subdomains already.

                          Technical SEO | Oct 17, 2011, 10:27 PM | anand2010
                          0
                        • sboelter

                          Multiple Domains, Same IP address, redirecting to preferred domain (301) -site is still indexed under wrong domains

                          Due to acquisitions over time and the merging of many microsites into one major site, we currently have 20+ TLD's  pointing to the same IP address as our "preferred domain:"  for our consolidated website http://goo.gl/gH33w. They are all set up as 301 redirects on apache - including both the www and non www versions. When we launched this consolidated website, (April 2010) we accidentally left the settings of our site open to accept any of our domains on the same IP.  This was later fixed but unfortunately Google indexed our site under multiple of these URL's (ignoring the redirects) using the same content from our main website but swapping out the domain.  We added some additional redirects on apache to redirect these individual pages pages indexed under the wrong domain to the same page under our main domain http://goo.gl/gH33w.  This seemed to help resolve the issue and moved hundreds of pages off the index.  However, in December of 2010 we made significant changes in our external dns for our ip addresses and now since December, we see pages indexed under these redirecting domains on the rise again. If you do a search query of : site:laboratoryid.com you will see a few hundred examples of pages indexed under the wrong domain.  When you click on the link, it does redirect to the same page but under the preferred domain.  So the redirect is working and has been confirmed as 301.  But for some reason Google continues to crawl our site and index under this incorrect domains.  Why is this? Is there a setting we are missing?   These domain level and page level redirects should be decreasing the pages being indexed under the wrong domain but it appears it is doing the reverse. All of these old domains currently point to our production IP address where are preferred domain is also pointing.  Could this be the issue? None of the pages indexed today are from the old version of these sites. They only seem to be the new content from the new site but not under the preferred domain. Any insight would be much appreciated because we have tried many things without success to get this resolved.

                          Technical SEO | Jun 2, 2011, 3:45 PM | sboelter
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter

                        Access all your tools in one place. Whether you're tracking progress or analyzing data, everything you need is at your fingertips.

                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.