The most basic question about domains

[jsammy]

Ok so I am sure everyone is going to have a huge laff and Ill probably be barred from the forums forums for such a ridiculously lame question.

does the the domain url style have anything to do with SEO?

Aside from being shorter or catchy, easier to remember, type, etc

So, all things being equal, if instead of www(dot)affiliatefix(dot)com, there was www(dot)affiliate-fix(dot)com ?

I have put together tons of sites in the past and that never really hit me till now...

I know about as basic as you can get, but is it a legit question to ask?

 

[profits]

Whether the dash in the domain name makes a difference or not has been long argued. The consensus seems to be that if you can get it without the dash, good, if not, don't panic.

As far as Exact match domains go, it has been said that google is penalising sites with long tail EMD's, I would still run with an EMD, but content plays a huge role. Make sure it's good, original, relevant content. Build you link juice with links from relevant sites and you should do ok.

 

[EymardSiojo]

That's right! EMD's still play a key role in SEO. Make sure it is not a long tail spammy looking URL that google hates.

Using hypen in the url is a method to hijack certain keywords that are already taken. Just be creaful using it when your building a niche site or an authority site.

Better get you domain without hypen and a .com.


P.s We are a different forum. You can ask anything legit

 

[jsammy]

Well what I asked sounded more ignorant then I meant. I know it helps with SEO, but really if hyphenated makes a difference

Thanks!

 

[Andy Haskins]

jsammy, there are no stupid questions! Ask away

I always prefer to get my domains without hyphens if I can but hey, the world isn't perfect and I've seen plenty of hyphenated domains ranking in the past! It's probably a pretty small factor in the grand scheme of things but I'm sure someone will say otherwise....

The way I see it, if a company can rank their unrelated domain for keywords then why can't you?

 

[jsammy]

So then this BEGS the next question? Why is .COM the most popular TLD?

Most of the other's such as .GOV and .MIL have specific uses, but .NET seems like an obvious choice for the internet right? If i remember correctly (im dating myself a bit), .COM was assumed to be short for "Company", correct?

 

[Marc]

Why is .COM the most popular TLD?

It is simply the most commonly used top-level domain (TLD)

... short for "Company", correct?

Right. Originally, it was used by U.S. companies, today it is accessible to everyone and spread worldwide.
As well the .net TLD : originally for network management facilities, nowadays also accessible for everyone.

Who knows, maybe the most used TLD soon will be .cn when China conquers also the internet ...

 

[jebuskrust]

The EMD lost the bonus it once had. Now it has no additional weight in the algorithm.
If you are watching Matt Cutt's videos on Google's Webmaster Channel on Youtube, you will notice that in the last year the focus is on big brands. Always go for a brandable domain.
And if you want to know if you should go hyphened domain or not, just ask yourself, are you able to advise 10 big brands using hyphened domains? I can't!
The hyphened domains just looks spammy as hell! Lots of spammers were registering them to get the EMD boost back in the day. Now they are useless and start with 2nd chance.

Always try going for .com, .net and .org
If you want to register .ly or .it, google would tend to think that you are targeting that market area. Unless you have a website who targets one particular country, I would choose that. I will always try going for the .com

 

[Jay Wessman]

As for EMDs (exact match domains) they used to allow people to rank really easily for certain terms but Google. So if you registered HorseRidingEquipment.com it would be a lot easier to rank for 'Horse Riding Equipment'. However Google doesn't give EMDs that much weight anymore so I wouldn't bother registering an EMD.

Instead go for something that's brandable as jebuskrust said. And if you CAN put in a keyword or two but ONLY if it doesn't make the name sound crap.

For example AffiliateFix.com is a great example of this. It's got the keyword 'Affiliate' in it but 'AffiliateFix' is still super brandable, it rolls off the tongue, is easy to remember and way better than going for something with just tonnes of keywords like AffiliateMarketingForums.com.

Sometimes though I might stumble across a name that's so catchy and awesome but that doesn't have a keyword in it and I'll still go for it anyway. Getting a keyword or two in there is great but it's definitely not 100% necessary at all to rank your site for that keyword.

And personally I'd try to always go for .com if you can and no hyphens just because people have a hard time remembering the other extensions or to add hyphens and if they want to return to your site they might just type in 'yoursite.com' instead of 'your-site.net' and be taken to the wrong site. Plus hyphens don't look that professional if you ask me... getting a domain like horse-riding-equipment.net to me just screams 'HorseRidingEquipment.com was already registered so I went with this instead'.

As for why .coms are the most common and prominent it's because they were pretty much the first domain that was commercially available to the public and back then .orgs and other extensions were reserved for non-profits and other organizations. And by the time all of those domains became available to everyone the '.com' extension had become so ingrained in people's minds that using anything else seemed harder to remember so people just kept on using it.

 

[guppuboss]

a domain without hyphen is easy to remember and EMD domains rank good. You should often update your blog to remain safe from penalties