Domain name with a hyphen
-
I am looking at starting a brand new website and purchasing a domain to see my hair product. My question is that domain i am wanting to purchase if a 2 word .com domain but it is not being currently used and it is up for auction for 10K.
I am looking a purchasing a domain name that is the same 2 words but a has a hyphen between the 2 works.
My assumption is that if I start building content, concentrating on seo (keywords, link building, etc) and brand building that I should not have any problems with my hyphen in the domain.
I am looking for feedback and insight from the SEO professionals! Thank you guys in advance.
UPDATED 1-29-13
Here is the scenario and I am looking on how you would handle it.
**name = my brand name
I am looking to purchase a domain within the year: namehair.com
I currently am using: namehairbrand.com
I have purchased: name-hair.com
My concern is if I began my SEO efforts and the brand grows extensively then the person who owns "namehair.com" will raise the price even more than the current price of 10k. I plan on purchasing that domain name within the next 18 months or so and then direct the traffic to the domain "namehair.com".
If I put all my efforts into "namehairbrand.com" and then submit to Google that I have changed domains - will I get my butt kicked by Google? Thank you guys - you are really helpful!
-
Here is the scenario and I am looking on how you would handle it.
**name = my brand name
I am looking to purchase a domain within the year: namehair.com
I currently am using: namehairbrand.com
I have purchased: name-hair.com
My concern is if I began my SEO efforts and the brand grows extensively then the person who owns "namehair.com" will raise the price even more than the current price of 10k. I plan on purchasing that domain name within the next 18 months or so and then direct the traffic to the domain "namehair.com".
If I put all my efforts into "namehairbrand.com" and then submit to Google that I have changed domains - will I get my butt kicked by Google? Thank you guys - you are really helpful!
Denny
-
I started a site ten years ago with a hyphen in the domain. The domain without the hyphen was owned by a domainer. The harder I worked the more traffic he received when my customers typed the domain without the hyphen.
I finally paid a lot of money to get the domain without the hyphen.
On another project I had a domain with a hyphen. Within a year I was able to obtain the domain without the hyphen in an auction. When I redirected the hyphen domain to the non-hyphen domain the rankings went up immediately. Immediately.
-
It's totally not a problem for SEO.
Just weird from a user perspective when you tell people www.my "hyphen" site.com and type thru traffic.
I personally don't like hyphens for that reason, but i would rather a hyphen and having a much longer available domain name.
What are the two words, keywords or brand name?
-
I have never had any issues with hyphenated domain names and I have used them many times.
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
-
Subfolder marketing issue - buying a new domain and 301 to subfolder on existing domain
Hello, I have a specific question and I'll try to be as precise as possible. I have a well ranked domain with good PA. When we were starting our new service I found out that for SEO purposes it would be best to put it under subfolder instead of subdomain or new domain all together because of PA that our domain has. Now, that went pretty well and our new service started appearing in SERPs and is improving rapidly since our link builing strategies were quite sucessful. But there is a problem - we can't advertise our service with a link like this - www.domain.com/subfolder. It's just really messy. And I was wondering if we buy a new domain and 301 redirect it to our subfolder what impacts will that have? If people start linking us as www.newdomain.com will it pass all the juice to www.domain.com/subfolder? Marketing wise I see a lot of benefits using newdomain but I'm afraid it can have SEO downsides and I'm asking for your help to clarify these. Thank you in advance, Best regards, Ivan
Branding | | mintmediadu0 -
Are you ever handicapping yourself in search by using a subfolder over a new domain/website?
Hello Moz Community! We are building a separate hospital related to a single service line that is currently part of our main website. Traditionally all our hospitals are folded into one website with the same brand. Problem: Our organization's leaders want to market the new hospital as "Brand Name X" nationally, and not use our locally strong brand name at all. Therefore is the smarter long-term decision to begin building content on a new website with the new "Brand name X" even though it will take longer and be harder, than building it on our big, established website with a 60+ DA site? What I fear is our current website's DA won't matter much if people nationally are using Brand X, which isn't part of our traditional brand name? And they won't be using the traditional brand name at all. Example Scenario: We create a new hospital just focused on heart-related issues. Do we move the bulk of information for this new hospital from http://www.nebraskamed.com/heart, to a new website that will better rank with the new brand X and for just heart-related keywords? Or is it still better to try and stick with the same domain in a subfolder?
Branding | | Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine0 -
Is there Schema Markup for "brand name"?
Hi Mozzers, I've been trying desperately for months to get my domain to rank #1 for its brand name in Google. This is made hard by the fact that the brand name is also a combination of two keywords, one of them being "Hire". I've actioned everything I can think of, setting up and maintaining social networks (including g+), adding the site to lots of high quality business directories, internal and external linking. I even asked right here. The site continuously rises in the ranks until it hits top of page 2 and then starts falling again. When searching [Brand name] +[Town of HQ] we get the open graph info displayed, and the g+ pin, but still only rank 3rd! My Question: Is there a schema.org markup for brand names? and would it make any difference adding this? I feel like I'm clutching at straws now... Oh were in the UK if that helps. I'd also be happy to share the domain via PM if anyone is willing to help!
Branding | | Silkstream0 -
Changing Social Media Profiles Name
Hi Mozzers, A client is thinking about changing their social media handles to shorten them to just their brand name as opposed to brand name plus the word 'apparel'. What is the implications of doing this and does the link change from facebook/brand-apparel or does the URL stay the same? Thanks Gareth
Branding | | Bush_JSM0 -
How to improve the quality score (QS) when bidding on competitor brand names in Google Adwords?
Hi, I have researched few sites on this topic and I could see that the competitor keyword should match with the add text relevance, landing page relevance and CTR. Any other factors more to be included to improve the quality score? Reference: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2285536/Google-Updates-How-AdWords-Quality-Score-is-Reported
Branding | | zco_seo0 -
ECommerce Sites: Sub domain vs. Unique Domains
Hello everyone! I manage 3 large eCommerce sites that sell textbooks, digital learning solutions, electronic teaching resources, etc., to three different markets in the education space (K-12, College, and Post-College/Career Search). Currently, the 3 sites live on three different sub domains of the companies main domain. Is this best practice? I assume we want all three under the same domain to consolidate domain authority. But... What if I told you that we have dozens of sub domains of the companies main domain? Some are for marketing sites, some are for digital products, some are customer-specific sites, etc. We probably have close to 100 sub domains that are used regularly. Then what if I told you that the company doesn't hardly even use the root domain (other than a handful of old pages)? Even the root domain redirects to a sub domain. Just looking for some insight on this, as I will be doing an SEO/marketing/conversion overhaul going forward. On a side note, we use Magento as an eCommerce platform, and it's rampant with duplicate content, duplicate page titles, pages with too many links, and so on and so forth. That's another problem for another day...
Branding | | brad.s.knutson0 -
Organic fluctuations after domain migration ?
I'm working on the rebranding of an ecommerce site We're going to do a domain migration and since half of the current traffic is coming from organic searches I'd like to estimate possible fluctuations on this channel. **Do you have any rebranding experience? or can suggest good case studies on this? ** (Technically speaking we know the protocol and also on the communication/strategy side we're covered.. we just need an estimate of the organic drop.. in the worst case scenario)
Branding | | homeonline0