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.
Does a dash in your domain name effect your ranking?
-
Does a dash in your domain name effect your ranking? or it dosen't really matter?
-
I would say it doesn't matter unless of course you are having a domain like www.this-is-my-colourful-nice-seo-friendly-website.com.
We use ours to say -online.com just to seperate it out. However our new domain doesn't have one in and we have two words together.
As long as you have something people can search on or recognise I think it will be ok.
-
Hi.
According to me dash doesn't affect your ranking but it use for separating two words ya category for example www.domain.com/seo-affiliate.php. Over here dash is used for saperating this two words. Search engine algorithms are advanced enough to identify two separate words without a space so no need to put dash. If your domain name is too long then you can use dash because, i thought domain names with dashes were less memorable than domain names without. If you decide to use a hyphenated domain, use the hyphens to separate your keywords where needed. By using dash in your domain names you are able to retain your original choice and also keep the keyword in its exact order but people sometimes forgot to type dash when there are looking for particular website so there is chance to losing visitors. So don't use dash in your domain is batter for ranking and traffic purpose.
-
I think it gets a bit spammy when you have 2,3 or more dashes in a domain name, the only reason you'd need that many is to make a super keyword rich domain name.
-
No it doesn't matter. If it's an Exact Match, Search Engines still see it as one, with or without the dash.
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
-
Does having multiple Domain aliases hurt SEO rank ?
Our company having multiple domain aliases (DIfferent TLD) like example.com, .net, .org, .club, .win to one site (Same Content). We do this because our country ISP is blocking a few of the domain aliases. Question: Does this hurt the SEO rank? What approach is the best for us to gain SEO Rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | missionunpossible0 -
Domain name suffix impact on SEO
Hello there, We are about to launch a new website and were wondering what impact a specific suffix would have from an SEO point of view. We were thinking about going for a domain which ends in .london as oppose to .com We are based in London and sell world wide via our website. We are suggesting www.domain.london as oppose to www.domain.com I would appreciate your views... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Do low quality subdomains affect the ranking performance/quality of a root domain?
Hi, Late last year the company I work for launched two new websites that, at the time, we believed were completely separate from our main website. The two new websites were set up externally and were not well-planned from an SEO perspective (LOTS of duplicate content) - hence, they have struggled to rank on Google. Since the launch of the new websites we have also noticed that our main website (that previously ranked very well) has suffered a decline in visitation and search engine rank. We initially attributed this to a number of factors, including the state of the market, and ramped up our SEO efforts (seeing minor improvement). We have since realised that these two new websites have been set up as subdomains of our main website, with MOZ displaying the same domain authority and root domain backlink profile. My question is, do poor quality subdomains affect the ranking performance of a root domain? I have not yet managed to find a definitive answer. Please let me know if more information is required - I am quite new to the whole SEO concept. Thanks! Amy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paulissai0 -
Would changing the file name of an image (not the alt attribute) have an effect of on seo / ranking of that image and thus the site?
Would changing the file name of image, not the alt attribute nor the image itself (so it would be exactly the same but just a name change) have any effect on : a) A sites seo ranking b) the individual images seo ranking (although i guess if b) would be true it would have an effect on a) although potentially small.) This is the sort of change i would be thinking of making :  changed to 
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam-P0 -
Unique domains vs. single domain for UGC sites?
Working on a client project - a UGC community that has a DTC model as well as a white label model. Is it categorically better to have them all under the same domain? Trying to figure which is better: XXX,XXX pages on one site vs. A smaller XXX,XXX pages on one site and XX,XXX pages on 10-20 other sites all pointing to the primary site. The thinking on the second was that those domains would likely achieve high DA as well as the primary, and would passing their value to the primary. Thoughts? Any other considerations we should be thinking about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | intentionally0 -
Is it worth switching from .net to .com if you own both domain names
For over 20 years the company I work for has used www.company.net as their TLD, because we could not register www.company.com at that time. However, currently we also own www.company.com www.company.com has a 301 re-direct to www.company.net We are a global company, and market leader in our industry. Our company name is associated with the product we make, and our competitors use our company name as their targeted keywords to attract visitors to their sites because our company name is synonym with the product we and they make. As we are a global company we also have lots of TLDcc's. The email address of all our employees worldwide have a .net email address extension. Would you advice switching from www.company.net to www.company.com??? And if so, what would be the reasons for this switch. Would it only be for branding purposes? Looking forward to some insights before taking on such an invasive switch (because of the switch of all email addresses of employees worldwide). Best regards, Astrid Groeneveld
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cordstrap0 -
Could ranking problem be caused by Parked Domain?
I've been investigating a serious Google ranking drop for a small website in the UK. They used to rank top 5 for about 10 main keywords and overnight on 24/3/12 they lost rankings. They have not ranked in top100 since. Their pages are still indexed and they can still be found for their brand/domain name so they have not been removed completely. I've coverered all the normal issues you would expect to look for and no serious errors exist that would lead to what in effect looks like a penalty. The investigation has led to a an issue about their domain registration setup. The whois record (at domaintools) shows the status as "Registered and Parked or Redirected" which seems a bit unusual. Checking the registration details they had DNS settings pointing correctly to the webhost but also had web forwarding to the domain registrar's standard parked domain page. The domain registrar has suggested that this duplication could have caused ranking problems. What do you think? Is this a realistic reason for their ranking loss? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjalc20110 -
Removing dashes in our URLs?
Hi Forum, Our site has an errant product review module that is resulting in about 9-10 404 errors per day on Google Webmaster Tools. We've found that by changing our product page URLs to only include 2 dashes, the module stops causing 404 errors for that page. Does changing our URL from "oursite.com/girls-pink-yoga-capri.html" to "oursite.com/girlspink-yoga-capri.html" hurt our SEO for a search for "girls pink yoga capri"? If so, by how much (assuming everthing else on the page is optimized properly) Thanks for your input.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano0