Question about domains with 2 or 3 hyphens

[impliweb]

I have a client who has 3 domains in the following format:

keywordkeywordkeywordkeyword.co.uk

keyword-keyword-keyword.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?

[vmialik]

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.

[MoosaHemani]

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!

[crackingmedia]

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