Domain Name - Which is better?
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I had a friend of mine ask me this question and I didn't really know how to go about answering.
He wants to know if, for example, www.cardealer.net is better than www.car-dealer.com or vice-versa? Both seem to be interchangeable to me. I hate websites with dashes in them but obviously it is necessary in some cases... ".net" is not my favorite either.
What would you recommend?
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Both www.cardealer.net and www.car-dealer.com will lose type-in traffic to www.cardealer.com.
I would find another domain that is a .com without a hyphen. After you have put a lot of work into the site you don't want your traffic going to the competitor.
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id take the .com
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There are outside factors which need to be considered. The answer will not always be the same.
Clearly you prefer the cardealer.com domain. I would investigate that domain before making any decision.
Questions to ask:
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What type of site is your friend trying to establish? Car sales?
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What type of site currently operates the cardealer.com domain?
If you go with the .net domain, there will clearly be a percentage of your customers who type in the .com URL and wind up on cardealer.com. On one end of the spectrum, you may find that cardealer.com is a forum site discussing the good and bad points of various car dealers. That's not so bad. Some sites are even friendly enough to place a link on their home page such as "Were you looking for cardealer.com? Click here".
On the other hand, the site may be owned by a direct competitor. You will surely lose some customers who visit the wrong site. This issue can be worsened if your competitor's site is better designed then yours or offers lower prices.
You need to ask yourself "What can I do to get 100% of customers who seek me to my site without them landing on the .com site?" Determine which URL will achieve that result, and there is your answer.
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I agree with dignan99 on the content points. More importantly I think you are hitting upon a marketing challenge than an SEO one. Both hyphens and .net's are not always remembered easily when verbally spoken. Another issue is that less experienced users may not think that .net is possible and instead try going to cardealer.net.com. When I have had to choose between the hyphenated or a .net domain name I just keep looking until I can find a domain name that doesn't have either.
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It ultimately comes down to which site has the better content, is ideally optimized for your keywords and phrases, and has the best linkage presence.
All things being equal, its most likely a 1-2 scenario.
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