Hyphenating a Domain Name - What would you do?
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So I have some chums setting up their own digital outfit.
When discussing SEO, naturally domain names came into play. They were looking at 'Gray Digital'. So, initially they jumped to the conclusion that they ought to buy 'graydigital.com' and the .co.uk variant.
But a best practice post: http://moz.com/learn/seo/domain - Leads me to think that 'gray-digital.com' may be the better option as far as readability is concerned?
Then of course you start thinking - 'should we just make it 'Gray-Digital-Marketing.com' instead?'
From your experience, what would you ladies and gents do?
Kind regards,
John.
(EDIT: Having read more around the subject I realise more than one dash is a bad idea. So instead would you bother with the singular hyphen?)
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Agree with Ryan Purkey's recommendation.
Domain names are treated differently than most text probably because of space constraints. You don't need to worry about separating words. You want to keep your domain name short and memorable. As Ryan says, having to say "Gray DASH or Hyphen Digital) is not memorable.
Go with graydigital if it's available.
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Stick with graydigital.com. You don't want to be saying, "Gray DASH or Hyphen Digital (but not underscore!)" when talking about your website. Plus, the words separate nicely visually by having the y and d juxtaposed. With any sort of link profile, content on site, and webmaster registration Google will know fairly quickly that Gray Digital Marketing and graydigital.com are the same thing.
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