SEO Test: Domain Hyphenation [Update]
-
In May I announced test results for domain hyphenation but after a 3 month followup the results have changed and the hyphenated domain now wins on what seems to be the first link instance advantage. I was unable to discover any other factors which may have influenced this test but if anyone has any ideas I would like to hear about it.
Here are the details of the SEO test and revealed URLs.
-
Yes that's my thoughts too. What's interesting is that they made a switch after a while.
-
Very nice find - thanks!
-
Maybe one of the factors why the hyphenated one ranks better is that it was indexed 1st and then the non-hyphenated one was indexed after.
Having 1 line of text that only the domain name is different could be considered duplicate content by Google thus the rankings.
-
to make a test I guess you would have to make two pages, with different gibberish on them and then place the keyphrase 2 times on the same char positions (on in the beginning of the document and one at the end.) on each page, but otherwise exactly the same (title exc..). that way we can rule duplicate content out.
I mean something like this:
page 1:
<title>key-phrase bla bla</title>
asd fgh key-phrace jhjd hjd lkd skl ælkjh ghsd sdf fsd key-phrase asdpage 2:
<title>key-phrase poi ert</title>
dsa qwe key-phrace kjhg tyu poi ert mnbvc asdf qwe tyu key-phrase qwehope I made sence
-
Hmm anyone notices ? that when i search 'Dejan Seo love' , the one without hyphenation scored better... while 'Dejan seo love_s_' gives a different result ...
And when we searched 'dejan seo testing' although the hyphenation scored better but the result for the one without hyphenation has all words BOLDED out like this 'Did you know that dejanseolovestesting.com.'
Hmm google indeed works in mysterious way xD
PS : It is too bad that your title is "Dejan Love Testing" i wonder if you have a "Dejan Loves Testing" that the result would be different?
-
Thank you. That explains it!
-
When you view the SERPs, and then click on the cache link there is a second line of text which says "These search terms are highlighted: dejan seo loves testing". In the cache results with the hyphens, all the key words are highlighted on the page. That does not happen on the result without the hyphens.
I believe that is the difference James is referring to.
-
Hi James,
No link building was done for these two domains. If they have links they would be random and automated from various places such as whois services scrapers etc.
Not sure I understand this part:
"a funny thing is if you view the cache version of the website Google notes that the hyphen domain as splitting up the text with spaces."
Are you talking about these two:
-
I was looking at the URL mentions within SERP results,
The non hyphen seems to have 126 mentions compared with the hyphen domain at 76, don't know about the quality of these links what link building tactics were employed.
Both seem to only pick up one link via OSE been on your main website.
I would also question the hosting/who is data and any other common areas for the website, a funny thing is if you view the cache version of the website Google notes that the hyphen domain as splitting up the text with spaces.
When comparing IP data from the host, seems as though they are on a similar server yet not the same correct?
IP Address 174.121.38.186
IP Address 174.121.38.162But overall very interesting test, and thank you for sharing.
-
I enjoyed reviewing the test results and this follow up. My two curiosities are:
-
what would be the result with different C blocks
-
are the two results dead even in SERP to where any factor can tip one result above the other. It could be that neither is winning but are equal, and Google has to place one ahead of the other based on a random factor such as which was crawled first.
-
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
-
Thoughts on Google's Autocomplete hurting organic SEO?
A client sent over an article about how Google's Autocomplete eliminates your chance for clicks. Saying that if your competitor is higher than you, the user will bypass the page one organic rank and click on a specific business from the autocomplete which in turn presents an entire page one result for that business. So in a sense they are wondering why they're doing organic SEO if potential customers are just going to bypass the page one organic results. I would love to hear thoughts from like minded people on this as I have to start proving my case with articles, facts, data, and research.
Algorithm Updates | | MERGE-Chicago0 -
Post penguin & panda update. what would be a good seo strategies for brand new sites
Hi there. I have the luxury of launching a few sites after the penguin and panda updates, so I can start from scratch and hopefully do it right. I will get SEO companies to help me with this so i just want to ask for advices on what would be a good strategies for a brand new site. my understand of the new updates is this content and user experience is important, like how long they spend, how many pages etc social media is important. we intent to engage FB and twitter alot. in New Zealand, not too many people use google+ so we will probbaly just concentrate on the first two hopefully we will try to get people to share our website via social media, apparent that is important should only concentrate on high quality backlinks with a good diverse set of alt tags, but concentrate on branding rather than keywords. Am i correct to say that so far? if that is the principle, what would be the strategy to implement these goals? Links to any articles would also be great please. Love learning. i just want to do this right and hopefully try to future proof the sites against updates as possible. i guess quality content and links will most likely to be safe. Thank you for your help.
Algorithm Updates | | btrinh0 -
15% Drop in Traffic. Anyone have theories about the most recent update?
Analyzing our traffic, looks like we were hit site wide, with some article pages that don't have great engagement seeing more damage than others. We've been talking to other sites, and sites that have never seen any penalties and do everything right have also seen about 15-20% drop in traffic. The sites we know that weren't affected are brands (sites you would recognize by name). The only conclusion I can draw from everything (looking at mozcast metrics 'big 10' is that branded websites saw a boost. Does anyone else have any theories about what this most recent update was about?
Algorithm Updates | | nicole.healthline0 -
Active Domain Resale?
Hi, Someone I know has just been offered a domain name by http://activedomainresale.com/. Is anyone familiar with this company? They're offering the non-hyphenated domain name (the person I know has the same domain name except with a hyphen) for a one-time fee of $49, payable through paypal or a credit card. When we contacted customer support by email (they did respond quickly), the email came from a different domain - directpremiumdomains.com. Has anyone had any experience with this? If it's legit, it seems like it could be a good opportunity to get the non-hyphenated URL but I'm concerned that it might be a scam. Thanks in advance! Carolina
Algorithm Updates | | csmm0 -
Wordpress Seo Title and Tagline
Hello, I am using wordpress. I also have a plugin called All in One SEO. I was wondering, how I should set up my SiteTitle and Tagline? The main keyword I am going after is "Baking " Others are Cooking, Teaching, World food
Algorithm Updates | | Cinfo10 -
How does my blog help in SEO
Hi I have recently put a wordpress blog on my site and have employed a few blog writers, each putting 2 or 3 posts per week up. There brief so far has been to write interesting, humorous and topical articles. Stupid as it may seem I have done this only because the general consensus seemed to be "you must have a blog for SEO" Does it help? Assuming it does: Should I post the same articles to my facebook page and or anywhere else? Should the articles have anchor text linking back to my site? What should I do to make it work well? Thanks in advance Andy
Algorithm Updates | | First-VehicleLeasing1 -
Question about Local / Regional SEO
Good Morning Moz Community, I have a local SEO/regional SEO question. I apologize if this question is duplicated from another area on this forum but, a query of the term Regional SEO showed no results, as did similar queries. Please preference this entire question with "Knowing what we know about the most recent changes to local search" I know what has worked in the past, my concern is Now. Working with a heavily regulated client that is regional, mostly East Coast US. They are in Financial Services and state licensing is a requirement. They are licensed in 15 states. Obviously, it would look foolish, in this day in age, to Title Tag individual pages with local modifiers and have numerous pages covering a similar topic with not much difference than localized modifiers in front of the keyword. I've never found that SE's can understand broad regional terms such as New England or Mid Atlantic or Southeast or Northeast, if someone knows different please share. Aside from an exact match search. The client does have 7 offices in various states. Perfectly matching and consistent listings in G Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local was step one and all their locations are now in those services and there are many more smaller local citation listings are in the works. We have also successfully implemented a plan to generate great reviews from actual customers, for each location, they're receiving a few a day right now. Their local places listings, where they have physical locations, are doing very well but: 1. What would the community's suggestion be on generating more targeted traffic in the 8 states where they have no physical location? 2. The client wants to begin creating smaller blogs that are highly localized to the states and major population centers that they do not have a physical location in. There is an open check book to dedicate to this effort however, I do a lot of work in this industry so I want to offer the best possible, most up to date advice, my concern is that these efforts will have two results: a. be obscured by the ”7 pack" by companies with local brick and mortar b. would detract from the equity built in their existing blog by generating content in other domains, I would prefer to continue growing the main blog. 3. As a follow up, it has been documented that Google is now using the same algorithm for local, personal and personalized, that being the case, is there any value in building links to you Places page? Can you optimize your Places page by using the same off site techniques as you would traditionally? Sorry to kill you with such a long question on a Sunday 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | dogflog1 -
Can you help with a few high-level mobile SEO questions?
Rolling out a mobile site for a client and I'm not positive about the following: Do these mobile pages need to be optimized with the same / similar page titles? If we have a product page on the regular site with an optimized title like "Men's Sweaters, Shirts and Ties - Company XYZ", should the mobile version's page have the same title? What if the dev team simply named it "Company XYZ Clothes" and missed the targeted keywords? Does it matter? Along the lines of question 1, isn't there truly just one index and your regular desktop browser version will be used for all ranking factors on both desktop and mobile SERPs? If that regular page indeed ranks well for "men's sweaters" and that term is searched on a mobile device, the visitor will be detected and served up the mobile page version, regardless of its meta tags and authority (say it's on a subdomain, m.example/.com/mens-department/ ), correct? Are meta descriptions necessary for the mobile version? Will the GoogleBot Mobile recognize them or will just the regular version work? Looks like mobile meta descriptions have about 30 less characters. Thanks in advance. Any advice is appreciated. AK
Algorithm Updates | | akim260