Using hyphenated sub-domains or non-hyphenated sub-domains? What is the question! I Any takers?
-
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
-
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 ;-]
-
I agree (FWIW)
-
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.
-
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!
-
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.
-
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~!!
-
Sorry - should have said "not very friendly!"
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
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
-
Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?
Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues. I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com. I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers. Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this. What says you?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Different Domains on Same IP
Hello I'm just wondering how much of a difference it makes having links to a site from 2 separate domains that are on the same IP, compared to if the domains were on separate IPs? Thank you! Sam
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Blogging on multiple domains
We have three different domains for geotargeting (za,uk and .com). Each site at at the moment has the same content with only country specific details changed like currency etc. What is the best way to get maximum SEO benefit when posting new content.When we post new content should we repost to all three domains (the same content) or will Google only index the url on the domain which is crawled first. Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | aquaspressovending0 -
Which domain we should continue with?
Hello All, We are working with a client who had manual penalty from Google. We worked on that and now penalty has been removed. Client had already started working on the new domain and now the big dilemma is- Which domain should we continue with? Old or New? We are suggesting them to continue with the old one as that domain had good PR, good backlinks, better visibility on their social profiles etc. What do you suggest? any inputs are highly appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | sachin-sv0 -
2 questions about linkbuilding
1. Are these types of sites bad to submit a link to? http://www.mompack.com/mom2mom/ 2. If I submit my product for another blog to review (in turn they write a post for me with links to my website), is this GOOD? Look forward to hearing back from you, thanks
Technical SEO | | ChrisTS0 -
Domain taken. Which is better? Using hypens or longer domain.
I am wanting to set up an e commerce site and the domain name that I want is taken. I am considering using a domain that has the main keyword I want to rank for as the domain. I have heard chatter of google penalizing these types of sites and it seems that it hasn't come about. This is something that I would like to test out. So if "electricscooters.com" is taken, should I use "electric-scooters.com" or "electricscooters4less.com" Just wondering if the hyphenated or the longer domain will rank higher. The site won't be spammy at all, I will carry a few different companies that offer similar products. So for this case, I would only sell scooters from a few different manufacturers. Feedback would be appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Dave_Whitty0 -
Robots.txt questions...
All, My site is rather complicated, but I will try to break down my question as simply as possible. I have a robots.txt document in the root level of my site to disallow robot access to /_system/, my CMS. This looks like this: # /robots.txt file for http://webcrawler.com/
Technical SEO | | Horizon
# mail webmaster@webcrawler.com for constructive criticism **User-agent: ***
Disallow: /_system/ I have another robots.txt file in another level down, which is my holiday database - www.mysite.com/holiday-database/ - this is to disallow access to /holiday-database/ControlPanel/, my database CMS. This looks like this: **User-agent: ***
Disallow: /ControlPanel/ Am I correct in thinking that this file must also be in the root level, and not in the /holiday-database/ level? If so, should my new robots.txt file look like this: # /robots.txt file for http://webcrawler.com/
# mail webmaster@webcrawler.com for constructive criticism **User-agent: ***
Disallow: /_system/
Disallow: /holiday-database/ControlPanel/ Or, like this: # /robots.txt file for http://webcrawler.com/
# mail webmaster@webcrawler.com for constructive criticism **User-agent: ***
Disallow: /_system/
Disallow: /ControlPanel/ Thanks in advance. Matt0 -
Domain Alias
I have a client that picked up a bunch of keyword rich domain names and he wants to point them to his current corporate site as domain aliases. Could this in anyway negatively or positively effect his SEO? or ranking? Thanks - Kyle Chandler
Technical SEO | | kchandler1