Will hyphens in my domain name have a negative impact on my SEO?
-
.
-
.
-
No problem, glad I could help. I am in these Q&A forums to make sure people get their questions answered, so please let me know if you have any more.
-
Alex,
I watched that Webinar and it was REALLY informative. I have a full page of notes and to-do's now that I think will help us really build our brand. Thanks for the suggestion!
-Alex
-
.
-
Not a problem, let me know if there is anything else I can help you with, or if you have any other questions.
-
.
-
.
-
A few thoughts on that Alex.
The first is, don't set up that redirect! In short it won't help you, for reasons such as potential duplicate content, confusing to visitors, and you'll have to choose where to link to...
If you own the original .com, then this is where your main efforts should lie. Directories, happy customers, and industry blogs will be more inclined to link to your companys site if it feels more legit.
Depending on the keyword difficulty, focus on making some linkbait content, be it a free online calculator or tool, or a free PDF download, or just some standard infographis and try distributing all of this content to relevant niche sites and social media.
In answers to your questions then;
1. Hyphens in this case will not have a negative effect on your URL. I believe Google will start clamping down on hyphenated keyword rich domains, as shown by the recent google branding serps update, but the timescale and effectiveness of this is unknown.
2. Don't go the extra mile and 301 the domain, unless you're keen on building links to both sites it's simply not worth it, focus on your main domain and optimise the landing pages for your keywords.
Solar Monster
-
No hyphens will not hurt your seo. That is you won't lose ranking because you have hyphens. But it does look a little spammy and people maybe less likely to click on domains with hyphens.
Yes hypehsn will help if they are in the domain. Mainly becasue when someone links to your domain like rich-keywords.com - the keywords are already in the anchor text. But I also advise away from going after keyword rich urls, they look spammy. Webmasters will also be less likely to get back to you on link requests and partnerships.
I recommend you stay with your company domain and try to optimize that. It also makes sense to have your company name in the url.
-
Hey Alex,
First off, nice name
Anyways, hyphens have shown to not be of any benefit in the search engines. It has really been exact match domains (with no hyphens) that have done the best. It won't negatively impact you, but it won't help either.
What I would do is focus on building a brand. In a recent blog post by Rand here, he had a presentation going over ranking factors and it has been concluded that exact match domains don't have as much importance as they used to.
I would focus on building a brand. If you look at the SERPs today, you will see that brands are continuing to show up, as they have trust with the users, which that is what Google is looking for.
Now to become a brand in Google's eyes was covered in a PRO webinar, which you can find here. This will ultimately be the best solution for you.
That's my opinion, let me know what you think by replying to me.
I look forward to hearing from you.
-Alex
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
-
Multiple links from same domain (different pages) considered in credibility of backlinks?
Hi, Let's say there are multiple backlinks from different pages of same domain to different pages of other domain like below: Website A: Page 1 -----------> Website B: Page 1 Website A: Page 2 -----------> Website B: Page 2 Do the pages of Website B pages will get backlinks authority equally or they don't get much backlinks impact as they have multiple backlinks from same domain? There were old school stories that Google ignores second link from same domain.....etc... So, please suggest on this. Thank you. Note: The question is NOT about content relevancy or domain authority score of the backlinks.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
A page will not be indexed if published without linking from anywhere?
Hi all, I have noticed one page from our competitors' website which has been hardly linked from one internal page. I just would like to know if the page not linked anywhere get indexed by Google or not? Will it be found by Google? What if a page not linked internally but go some backlinks from other websites? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
US domain pages showing up in Google UK SERP
Hi, Our website which was predominantly for UK market was setup with a .com extension and only two years ago other domains were added - US (.us) , IE (.ie), EU (.eu) & AU (.com.au) Last year in July, we noticed that few .us domain urls were showing up in UK SERPs and we realized the sitemap for .us site was incorrectly referring to UK (.com) so we corrected that and the .us domain urls stopped appearing in the SERP. Not sure if this actually fixed the issue or was such coincidental. However in last couple of weeks more than 3 .us domain urls are showing for each brand search made on Google UK and sometimes it replaces the .com results all together. I have double checked the PA for US pages, they are far below the UK ones. Has anyone noticed similar behaviour &/or could anyone please help me troubleshoot this issue? Thanks in advance, R
Algorithm Updates | | RaksG0 -
New Website Old Domain - Still Poor Rankings after 1 Year - Tagging & Content the culprit?
I've run a live wedding band in Boston for almost 30 years, that used to rank very well in organic search. I was hit by the Panda Updates August of 2014, and rankings literally vanished. I hired an SEO company to rectify the situation and create a new WordPress website -which launched January 15, 2015. Kept my old domain: www.shineband.com Rankings remained pretty much non-existent. I was then told that 10% of my links were bad. After lots of grunt work, I sent in a disavow request in early June via Google Wemaster Tools. It's now mid October, rankings have remained pretty much non-existent. Without much experience, I got Moz Pro to help take control of my own SEO and help identify some problems (over 60 pages of medium priority issues: title tag character length and meta description). Also some helpful reports by www.siteliner.com and www.feinternational.com both mentioned a Duplicate Content issue. I had old blog posts from a different domain (now 301 redirecting to the main site) migrated to my new website's internal blog, http://www.shineband.com/best-boston-wedding-band-blog/ as suggested by the SEO company I hired. It appears that by doing that -the the older blog posts show as pages in the back end of WordPress with the poor meta and tile issues AS WELL AS probably creating a primary reason for duplicate content issues (with links back to the site). Could this most likely be viewed as spamming or (unofficial) SEO penalty? As SEO companies far and wide daily try to persuade me to hire them to fix my ranking -can't say I trust much. My plan: put most of the old blog posts into the Trash, via WordPress -rather than try and optimize each page (over 60) adjusting tagging, titles and duplicate content. Nobody really reads a quick post from 2009... I believe this could be beneficial and that those pages are more hurtful than helpful. Is that a bad idea, not knowing if those pages carry much juice? Realize my domain authority not great. No grand expectations, but is this a good move? What would be my next step afterwards, some kind of resubmitting of the site, then? This has been painful, business has fallen, can't through more dough at this. THANK YOU!
Algorithm Updates | | Shineband1 -
Timeline for 301 Redirects to Take Full Effect in SEO Rankings?
Hey, I am working on transitioning a website and all of my current URL's will be slightly changed (moving to dynamic pages). I understand that I will need to 301 redirect all the old pages to their new counterparts but I would like to know how long it will take for the 301 redirects to take full effect in the search rankings. I ask because my site is an e-commerce site that receives 90% of it's business in January and the transition would take place December 15th. If my search rankings are not back up to par by January 1st then I will take a drastic hit to revenue. Please help this SEO noob out!
Algorithm Updates | | Stew2221 -
Long term rankings drop after swapping primary domain
Hey...this is my first post on Moz so please go easy on me! I've recently been baffled by the ranking behavior of a domain I do SEO for. In short, the primary domain was "musashispicymayo.com". After several months of SEO efforts and a really solid PR run the site managed to run up to #1 for several target keywords. For the purposes of this question I'd like to focus on the term "spicy mayo". "Musashispicymayo.com" was steadily climbing for as far back as page 5 until it ultimately reached #1 rank on Google for "spicy mayo". We also had another domain "musashifoods.com" which was originally 301 redirecting to "Musashispicymayo.com". About 3 months ago (shortly after acquiring the top ranking) the client wanted to reverse the domains so we started using "musashifoods.com" as the primary and redirecting "musashispicymayo.com" to that. In summary:
Algorithm Updates | | Andy-Twizen
ORIGINALLY: musashifoods.com 301 redirect -> musashispicymayo.com
NOW: musashispicymayo.com 301 redirect -> musashifoods.com At the time of the swap I did the following: Redirected the domain using a 301 via htaccess (made sure "www" requests are forwarded too) Created a new Google analytics account / webmaster account for "musashifoods.com" Went into my old webmaster tools account and used the change of address tool In the new webmaster tools account i submitted a sitemap and requested a crawl of the new domain Ensured the new primary domain was properly configured and all pages had the correct urls in the source code Verified that Google has updated their index and "musashifoods.com" now shows in the results. Now of course musashispicymayo has the keyword in the domain but I find it hard to believe that that is what caused such a dramatic and swift drop in rankings. In fact a good portion of the backlinks actually point to "musashifoods.com"...Did I miss something else here? Does Google penalize you for reversing 301 redirects like that instead of just using a new domain altogether? Let me know if I can provide any additional info that would help clarify...any advice is greatly appreciated!0 -
What's better for seo, NOINDEX, or INDEX
Hello Mozers; I am having an issue, my client has 10K pages on their site; in WP, and they have a classified section. Question #1: I am asking, what's better for seo, NOINDEX, or INDEX, for their Classified section. They currently have no SEO plug ins, that fix their errors, and warnings. Question #2: My question is also, do I want the Categories crawled, or INDEXED or NOINDEX? Check out their Campaign results by Moz: Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters) 32 Too Many On-Page Links 9,032 Missing Meta Description Tag 6,234
Algorithm Updates | | smstv0 -
With Google's Location Based Searches, Should I Include a City Name with My Keywords?
What I mean is when you search on Google it seems to pull information by your location so would it be helpful including the city name + keyword still for SEO or would it be just as helpful using just the keyword? For example, a client is in Alexandria, VA and has a computer repair shop so would "Alexandria computer repair" be as good or better than "computer repair"? Just a little curious. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | CodyOelker-AMICreativeStudio2