[ad#large_rect]
SEO and domain Names
When optimized your site, a domain name with keywords will rank better than a domain name without keyword. Google does put certain importance of the domain names when calculating its relevancy of certain keywords e.g. fungshui.com currently rank top 20 in Google which their contains nothing but some flash movies.
Hyphenated Domain name = high search ranking?
However, when I read posts from SEO forums, or self proclaimed SEO “gurus” will suggest you register a hyphenated domain in order to increase your position in the search engine results! Well, it may be, but is it necessary? Their theories say that Google treats hyphen and dot as a space, so if a hyphen is placed in a domain, Google will distinguish there is a separation of keywords. That is two different words instead of one combine word. But is it true? Let’s look at some of the domains names as an example:
- Affordablehosting.com keyword targeting: “affordable hosting”
Google search results: #1 for the keywords.
(click to enlarge)Does Google not knowing “affordable hosting” as two words instead of one word? If it doesn’t know why the domain shows in #1 position in search result?
- seocompany.ca Keyword targeting:”seo company”
Google search results: #1 for the keywords:
(click to enlarge)Again they don’t have hyphenated domain, but they are ranking number 1 for the keyword in Google search result. So is hyphenated domain necessary?
- webdesign.org – keywords targeting: “web design”. The site is ranking number 3 in Google as you can see in the follow picture
(click the photo to enlarge)
So hyphenated domain = high search ranking is barely a myth! It may also true when naming your web file such as web-design.html and webdesign.html (as you can see in the above photo) since Google highlighted the keywords in the search results which indicates, their engines notice they are two words rather one word. But I am just guessing since in SEO, no one is 100% sure on how Google, or other search engines rank the websites. After all only the inner most Google engineers know exactly the formula!
So next time, don’t blindly listen to the so called gurus says. Take sometimes and find out yourself!
