Hyphenated keyword rich domains - is a hyphenated .co.uk better than a non-hyphenatedlesser TLD such as .org?
-
Hey there, Would anyone be kind enough to share their experience of using keyword rich hyphenated domains. Are they as effective at tanking as non hyphenated domains?
i.e would it be better to get a lesser non-hyphenated TLD such as .org for example rather than a hyphenated co.uk?
-
Carlos, thanks for taking the time, appreciated.
-
Here's some old posts that might help you further...
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name http://www.seomoz.org/blog/rules-of-domain-name-selection http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-much-weight-does-google-give-to-exact-match-domains
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/exact-match-domains-are-far-too-powerful-is-their-time-limited You can see in the last post by Rand (2010) compared to the first link (2005) how things may have changed.
I am not sure what other views are on it now in 2012 - but again - I would always look at it as if I was creating a business first and not just a website. Go for the brandable non-hyphenated non spammy option.
-
Based on our experience I would I would stay away from keyword stuff over hyphenated domains. We have had better results going with brandable types names and just concentrating on content and other elements of SEO. If you are talking about a website with a UK audience I would stick to .co.uk unless of course it is some kind of org or charity etc.
If you do want to get keywords in the domain - then go for it - just don't go over the top to make it so spammy that you get penalized for it and you also don't need the hyphens. The keywords can get parsed in the domain without the separators.
Keywords in domains might have weight this year.... (again) - but next year after the herds have milked it to death (again) - they may not be given much weight... and on and on. I am sure I saw some study on SEOMoz some years back on this though (in terms of keyword rich domains versus no-keyword rich domains).
I think if it were me I would always lean on the side of creating a brand first - a business.... one that wasn't reliant on the swings and rollercoaster ride of the Search Engine algo's.
Do that, think about what the content is going to be - and your audience and your traffic will work itself out in spades no matter what your domain is.
Carlos
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
-
Changing posts that target same keyword to target SIMILAR keywords
Hello, I'm new to SEO and until the last year I was not aware that creating content that target same keywords would make Google choose only one to rank better. Can I leave the best page (highest ranked one) as it is and change the rest that target the same keyword to target similar keywords ? Just a simple example: I have two pages targeting "best supplements to muscle gain" Leave the best one targeting that keyword and now I change the content of the other to target "best supplements for muscle size" This is the smartest move or I'm missing something here and will make things worse ? Ex: maybe some of tthose pages with same keyword arent ranking for the keyword I want but are ranking for another one that I dont know. I'm really insecure about making changes and end up getting worse results.. Thank you (sorry for my bad english)
On-Page Optimization | | Glinski1 -
Keyword Stuffing and Product Reviews
Hello Fellow Mozzers! I am pretty new the SEO world and have been tasked with improving our companies SEO with no prior knowledge of anything to do with SEO as of about 5 months ago. So far, I have been fairly successful (May be luck). There is a product page on our website that has moved from Rank 8-9 all the way up to Rank 3, on a high volume keyword, which increased our traffic to that URL by 500%! I was very proud of this accomplishment until tragedy struck... We suddenly dropped to Rank 6. It doesn't look like we've lost any Backlinks to this URL. My suspicion is that we got penalized for Keyword Stuffing since we recently changed from have multiple pages for a specific product's reviews to having them all on one page (To decrease the number of URLs our Site has). Many of these product reviews have the Keyword in them making us have over 30 of this specific keyword on our page. Could this be a valid suspicion? Should we go back to having different URLs for reviews and Disallow them for Robots?
On-Page Optimization | | LaceyVapeWild0 -
Selling in a US and UK market so what language should my site be in? UK English or US English
We are a UK based company who sell a have a holiday product mainly to the UK and the US markets. We are just reworking the website and hit the wall on whether we should be writing in British English or US English or do we just do both? Any help would be much appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | Mutatio_Digital0 -
Breadcrumbs keyword repeats
Hi I have a client project who's developers platform is populating the category part of the breadcrumbs with the header tag. Since these include the pages primary target keywords/phrase they are being repeated in the breadcrumbs increasing the keyword/phrase count on the page as well as repeating/duplicating the sentence. Can this cause problems ? or not because Google knows its not part of the page content/body copy (because its a breadcrumb) ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Keywords in Navigation
Hi, What is best practice for main navigation links with regards to use of keywords in them. For example is it best to using the phrase 'Pricing", "Website Pricing" or "Website Design Pricing" To me 'Pricing' is more appropriate because to the user they know they are on a website designer's site so what else would pricing be for right?! Furthermore you use less 'real estate' on the nav bar! There is on page text around the site which has links to "see our website design pricing" etc so I assume that is perhaps a more natural place to include that phrase? Look forward to your insights 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | NeilD0 -
Keywords per Page
Iv'e looked through the QA here and there are a lot of different conflicting opinions on what is a generally a good idea. For Example Florist Clearwater Clearwater Florist Florist in Clearwater Florist in Clearwater FL Clearwater FL Florist Clearwater Florida Florist Florist in Clearwater Florida Florist near Clearwater FL etc.... So for something like this example....should I have one page represent all of these keyword iterations or split them among different pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BenGMKT0 -
Rich Snippets - What am I doing wrong
Hi all, This is my first post and I really hope someone in here can point me in the right direction. Background:
On-Page Optimization | | bfrl
I added Rich Snippets code to the footer of my site, tested it on http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets which all looks good. I was attempting to link reviews for our brand rather than specific products as these product reviews aren't available. Result:
Every page on my site contained the same rich snippets code and within a couple of days all the site pages were indexed including review stars. After another couple of weeks the review stars were removed from every page on the next crawl/index. Next Steps:
I removed Rich Snippets code from every page except my home page. The rich review stars appeared in the search results for a couple of days but in the past two weeks they have since disappeared again. What next?
I appreciate that I went about the implementation incorrectly but at this time only the home page contains valid mark up but no review stars in search. Has anyone got experience or advice to help me out in this situation? Many thanks.0 -
Keyword use in Title tag?
To improve SEO on a particular keyword, should you use that same keyword in the title tag of multiple pages within your site? Will that help or would it actually hurt by causing pages within your site to complete against each other for that keyword? Does it make a difference if that keyword is truly used on all those different pages?
On-Page Optimization | | KHCreative0