Proof that Personalised Pop Art has said goodbye to web anonymity.

Simple SEO still gets results

I haven’t done anything especially clever. Just good basic on-page SEO:

• Unique and keyword-rich page titles
• Unique meta descriptions
• Unique meta keywords – for what they’re worth
• Keyword-rich h tags

But we’re not done yet.

Dumping the hyphen from the domain name

I wrote recently about the spectacular results I’d achieved by dumping the dash from my domain name. In moving from www.web-copywriter.com.au to www.webcopywriter.com.au, I’d gone from #29 to #1 overnight. (Admittedly, after that brief flirtation with top spot, I’m now down to #2 but we’ll be back) We’re about to repeat the trick.

Responding to SEO’s changing algorithms

Search engines used to prefer domain names with hyphens. Now they don’t. It was potentially risky changing my domain – and it’s a pain to have to get people to change links. (For them too). But it worked in spades. So now www.personalised-pop-art.co.uk is about to become www.personalisedpopart.co.uk. I’ll keep you posted on the results.

“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 The rules are unpublished.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”.

Here’s a little test for you. Your name is Ray Costanza. You’re starting a new company and you want to sell drill bits. Should your domain name be www.raycostanza.com.au or www.drillbits.com.au? Well, maybe neither. Here Max Webster looks at SEO and Domain name considerations.

Using Keywords in your Domain Name is good for SEO

Your domain name is the first thing the search engine spiders see and their first clue to what your site is about. So, ideally, you want your domain to include keywords. So, if you sell drill bits, and the domain name www.drillbits.com.au is available, then this would be a good domain name, wouldn’t it? A better name than www.raycostanza.com.au. But perhaps not ideal.

SEO, Domain Names and Hyphens or Dashes

When Google looks at www.drillbits.com.au, it can read the words “drill” and “bits”, so it will know this site is likely to have something to do with drill bits. So, that’s good. However, if Google looks at www.drill-bits.com.au or www.drill.bits.com.au, it will rate those names higher than www.drillbits.com.au. This is kind of ironic – given that people tend to race out and buy domain names that run keyword together, whereas domains with the keywords separated by hyphens are very often still available. So, you should make www.drill-bits.com.au your domain name, right? Well, not necessarily.

Balancing SEO with Usability and Memorability

The problem is, it’s harder to type a dash or hyphen in a domain name than it is to just run the keywords together. So, from a usability point of view, www.drillbits.com.au is preferable. What’s more, it’s harder to get people to remember a domain name that includes a hyphen. For example, you’d prefer to be able to tell people that they should go to drillbits.com.au rather than drill-dash-bits-dot-com-dot-au – particularly if you’re running a radio ad campaign. You also won’t capture the person who just types in drillbits.com.au to see what comes up. So what’s the solution?

Buying multiple domain names and redirecting

The ideal solution would be:

1. Buy www.drill-bits.com.au and make this your main website domain name
2. Buy www.drillbits.com.au and redirect it to www.drill-bits.com.au
3. Buy www.raycostanza.com.au and redirect it to www.drill-bits.com.au as well
4. Use www.drillbits.com.au on all your company stationery
5. Have all your company email addresses include the “drillbits” name (e.g. ray@drillbits.com.au)

This would give you the best of all worlds:

• The best SEO performance because Google loves www.drill-bits.com.au
• The best usability and memorability because people get to use www.drillbits.com.au
• And your highschool sweetheart can track you down by typing in www.raycostanza.com.au

Of course, we can’t always get the domain names we want. We’ll talk about some options in that situation in another post.