Do hyphenated searches impact SEO?
-
Something I recently considered was whether a hyphen in a search term would effect the results that come up. For example, Is there a difference between using 'i-phone' and 'i phone' as anchor text? Some of my search results seem similar but do show some slight differences.
Can anyone shed light on the matter?
-
Thanks, Rob.
I did notice the search volumes are the same. And it is true that the searches are very close. With Semantic update this may become even closer as they are the same in reality.
It crossed my mind though that there may be a benefit of choosing 'i phone' over 'i-phone' as people are less likely to type in a hyphen rather than not, especially on mobile. Every little helps.
-
Technically, they are treated as separate terms, but because they are likely to be closely semantically linked you won't see any drastic variations.
If you go into the Keyword Planner tool, you can see that for that iphone example you get different search volumes for "iphone" and "i-phone". Therefore Google does recognise them as separate search terms.
However, in 95% of cases I'd say, a hyphenated version of a keyword or keywords is more often than not showing the same search intent from a user. Therefore, Google will do its best to serve up similar search engine results. With the algorithm being as sophisticated as it is, it can make this connection in most instances.
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
-
Looking for seo expert
Dear members. I am looking for a seo expert who can help in my business presence? thanks
Link Building | | hellomandy21371 -
SEMrush Backlink Damaging SEO?
I did a test recently with a sponsored article for some of my products, including my most popular product (https://www.spaceanswers.com/sponsored/sponsored-wear-a-piece-of-the-universe-with-the-space-collectives-meteorite-jewellery/) and it just so happens that recently this very product dropped from 2nd position to 51+, I have since managed to restore it to 6th position but I am wondering if this article is damaging my efforts? SEMrush is showing a page score of 4/100 and a trust score of 3/100, which is obviously very low. Is this helping or hurting my SEO?
Link Building | | moon-boots0 -
New to SEO, looking for advice.
Good day. I am fairy new to SEO and a lot of things about how google ranking works is very confusing to me. For example i do not understand why websites that are not optimized score 1st positions. Currently i am working on optimizing http://logiunvarti.lv/ for google.lv. I would like to ask if i am going in the right direction as far as on-page optimization and any kind of suggestion would be very welcome. Another roadblock i have reached is link building. Latvia is not a big country and most of the websites on similar topic as my are either competitors and are have low domain authority, dead for years, or simply ignore emails. Would social media be a decent alternative? I feel like i am missing a crucial point on SEO in for my country. I would be extremely grateful for any advice or if possible to contact me on skype for a better explanation on my problem.
Link Building | | AlexElks0 -
Unique pages per search phrase, Yes or No?
Hi People What is the general consensus regarding having bespoke pages for several search phrases? Should you have an individual page on your site for each main key phrase you want to target or should you target several phrases for each page e.g. Target 3 phrases per page. And if having separate pages for key phrase should there be links on site to these pages or is it enough just to have them in a site map? Thanks Andy
Link Building | | First-VehicleLeasing0 -
Is blog commenting still useful for SEO, post Panda and Penguin?
One website I checked is ranking well on Google. Upon checking its backlinks, I found that most of them are blog comments. Is blog commenting still valuable? Anyone encountered any recent problem (ranks gone down, etc)? Are there any specific strategy to blog commenting these days? Thanks!
Link Building | | AgentsofValue0 -
Should I become a regular contributor to help my SEO link building?
I've been offered the opportunity to contribute to a blog as often as I want and have a link included at the bottom of each post. Will this be much help to me in my link building SEO campaign? As I understand it more links from different root domains are what really count? So 20 links each from a different site is more valuable that 20 links from one site? Should I take up this opportunity or are my efforts best spent elsewhere?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
How do you search blogs by targeted demo or language?
I need to make a list of blogs popular with 2 0something men who are bi-lingual (spanish/english) Any suggestions? Tried to use Open Site Explorer (it wasn't working) Thanks!
Link Building | | wpsoule0 -
Best Blog Search Engine
What's the best way to find blogs? Any search engine or blog catalog you recommend? I"m trying to find blogs with specific topics/articles.
Link Building | | SoulSurfer80