Will hyphens in my domain name have a negative impact on my SEO?

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[alexhoug]

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.

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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

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[alexhoug]

Not a problem, let me know if there is anything else I can help you with, or if you have any other questions.

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[aarondicks]

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

[tylerfraser]

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.

[alexhoug]

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