I’ve just conducted a live experiment on the SEO effect of a hyphen in domain names and the impact has been swift and spectacular. By dumping the dash from my domain name, my site has leapt in the Google rankings from 29th yesterday to #1 today.
“Hyphenated is not only not better, but in this day and age is clearly worse” Aaron Wall SEO Book
“This is what makes SEO so tricky. The rules are unpublished. And they keep changing”
In the SEO dash, the hyphen turned out to be Ben Jonson
Conventional SEO Domain Naming Wisdom
In his Dummies Guide to SEO, Peter Kent said that if you have a choice of domains between rodentracing.com and rodent-racing.com then you choose the latter. Google, he said, would rank rodent-racing.com more highly. So, when choosing my own domain name, I selected web-copywriter.com.au. But I also bought webcopywriter.com.au and thewebcopywriter.com.au as defensive moves.
Hitting a Google Ranking brick wall
My site web-copywriter.com.au was ranking reasonably well – particularly since it’s only been around a few months:
- #1 web copywriter sydney
- #1 seo copywriter sydney
- #4 website copywriting
But, ironically, for “web copywriter”, the highest I’d reached was about #19 and sometimes I’d languish down in the 40s. Give it time, I thought. But it didn’t get better. Recently I was 29th. And I couldn’t see why domains without hyphens were performing very well – contrary to Peter Kent’s assertions (at least in his book).
Going to Aaron Wall – the SEO source
I decided to join the renowned SEO Book online community and invited their thoughts on the issue. Specifically, would they still recommend using the hyphen? Here is what the SEO guru, Aaron Wall himself, had to say:
“Hyphenated is not only not better, but in this day and age is clearly worse. I would be more inclined to use the version of the domain without the hyphen because it is easier to remember, easier to market, and because some search engines (like Google and Live) give exact match domains a ranking bonus (with a hyphen you lose that bonus).”
There you have it. So, I switched my domain from web-copywriter.com.au to webcopywriter.com.au. How would it affect my ranking?
Waiting for Google to index
You know what it’s like when you launch a new domain – constantly checking to see whether Google has indexed it. It had been about 4-5 days and nothing. Then, just this afternoon, up it popped. Only 4 of the 40 odd pages had indexed, but it was a start. And how did the new domain rank?
The SEO jury is in. The dash is out
Now you wouldn’t think the effect would be immediate. Particularly since so few pages have indexed. But, no. The effect was quick and spectacular. Yesterday, on google.com.au, “from pages from Australia”, my site was ranked 29th. Today, for “web copywriter”, it’s ranked #1. Now, that is what I call a D-R-A-M-A-T-I-C rise.
The shifting sands of SEO
This is what makes SEO so tricky. The rules are unpublished. And keep changing. What was once recommended is now discouraged. But, for the moment, I can categorically report that a domain name with www.keyword1keyword2.com is infinitely better than one with www.keyword1-keyword2.com. And, I can report this from the lofty eminence of Google’s #1 ranked “web copywriter”.
10 comments ↓
Sorry mate, but I’ve just tried it and I’m actually ranked #1 at the moment on Google Australia, ‘pages from Australia’ on the term “Web Copywriter” with my website http://www.contentwriter.com.au... You’re right behind me though.
Hi, very interesting experiment and quite a dramatic result. I’m wondering if the same goes for pages within a website, so for instance on your website you have pages like seo-link-building.html – would it also be better to have them as seolinkbuilding.html or are the ‘rules’ different for page names? Have you done any experiments with that as well?
A fleeting moment of glory.
Yes, Flash Designer, that’s something I’d like to know as well. Will explore when I come up for air again.
I do very much the same trick with the domain name as you, just check google.com on “Flash Designer”
Google.com.au is very much covered on anything Flash
Flash Designer, Flash Design, Flash software, Flash Templates, etc
I tend to believe that hypens are beneficial in HTML page names, but it should be kept reasonable, most likely 2 words and related to the theme of your website.
I got a common sense approach to SEO. If I think that something would make sense I apply it. Hypens in domain names are simply bad branding , so not very professional, and therefore Google should sooner or later penalise such sites. Hypens in HTML pages are more related to the structure of your website and should be alright.
Micky from contentwriter.com.au is my wife, so it appears to be working for us.
Good luck
Menno
[...] wrote recently about the spectacular results I’d achieved by dumping the dash from my domain name. In moving from http://www.web-copywriter.com.au to http://www.webcopywriter.com.au, I’d gone from #29 to [...]
[...] wrote previously about the spectacular effect on rankings of dumping the dash from my domain name. In moving from web-copywriter.com.au to webcopywriter.com.au I went from #29 on “pages from [...]
Thank you so much for sharing the useful information on use of dash in domain name, I really like it and looking forward to read more on latest seo updates and ranking factors.
SEO Domain Names absolutely do make a difference. I think it is the top of the structure for a fully effective natural organic seo web site. The structure has key words, keywords effectively used since the phone book known as as business categories, sometimes now with geo attached. I have lots of key worded generic term websites, makes a huge difference everytime. It takes years of rank building and inbound links to compete. Type in any keyword, and what is the percentage of front page that has that keyword in the domain name. I have seen google respect this, but if the content is not right and people back out, google sees that too. If the web site does not stay there on the front page, the visitors have nothing to see and google seems to know this. It does not surprise me with many stats sites showing page visit times and page views per visit. Again, SEO also means content, having something for the seeker when they get to your website. SEO Domain Names work! Keep it clean and for a purpose, to inform or entertain, not misdirect…
[...] Originally Posted by James Legacy Really? (Anyone else care to chime-in on this?) Check this article out James. It’s not what I would call authoritative, but gives you some insight into what someone else experienced regarding domain name dashes. SEO Google ranking – Dump the domain dash [...]
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