should key words be separated in the url name in order to maximise ranking?

[pvanderwal]

Hi, I'm just putting together a site, I understand that it helps to have the subject matter included in the url (eg www.singlesdatingsite for a dating site) but I wanted to know, does it help the rankings if the terms are separated - eg www.singles-dating-site?

[jag]

Yes.Every thing depends on ur back links. :) and u can focus and bring single dating site SK to top positions

All the best

JAG


Hi, I'm just putting together a site, I understand that it helps to have the subject matter included in the url (eg www.singlesdatingsite (http://www.singlesdatingsite/) for a dating site) but I wanted to know, does it help the rankings if the terms are separated - eg www.singles-dating-site? (http://www.singles-dating-site/?)

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

I will reccomend that you pick a domain that you believe will be a good brand for you - something that your users can remember and that is easy to communicate to others.

The value of keywords in domains or file names are so minimal that you should only do it if it makes sense to users too.

Hyphenated domains is NOT reccomendable! They look "scammy" to users and I suspect that they do to engines too.

[jag]

yes i agree but my suggestion is only for seo, now a day for a business people use atleast two domains, one for seo and other as brand name or company name.

JAG


I will reccomend that you pick a domain that you believe will be a good brand for you - something that your users can remember and that is easy to communicate to others.

The value of keywords in domains or file names are so minimal that you should only do it if it makes sense to users too.

Hyphenated domains is NOT reccomendable! They look "scammy" to users and I suspect that they do to engines too.

[ewc21]

at least 2 domains? Really? I think you mean brand domains and not business domains.

Why need an "seo domain" for SEO reasons if you can just optimize the "business domain" to obtain good results?

pvanderwal, I see no difference in using either of the two. I used to maintain the site www. buildingbrands .com and we never thought of using building-brands as a domain name even if we were targetting the keyword "brands". If you search "brands" in Google, I guess it's still at the first page among 200million competitors.

In the end I would even prefer a non-hyphenated domain name as long as it's not too lengthy to be remembered. I often think hyphenated ones as scammer sites (using more than one hyphen as in your example).

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

It's still the same. Hyphenated domains is "yesterdays" SEO. Besides, pvanderwal did not ask for advise on a "SEO site" but rather a regular site.

> now a day for a business people use atleast two domains
No, a few do, but most sites not.

I believe it was Yahoo that some time ago at a SES conference talked about an analysis they did where they looked at the number of hyphens and quality of sites. As it turned out, the more hyphens the lower the quality was. Not surprising to me. I think thats how more and more users see it too

[dannysullivan]

Please also see our standing thread (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=5496) on this topic.

[jag]

Yes ewc21, most of the hypen domains are used for web development company for ur kind information ;)

Jag


at least 2 domains? Really? I think you mean brand domains and not business domains.

Why need an "seo domain" for SEO reasons if you can just optimize the "business domain" to obtain good results?

pvanderwal, I see no difference in using either of the two. I used to maintain the site www. buildingbrands .com and we never thought of using building-brands as a domain name even if we were targetting the keyword "brands". If you search "brands" in Google, I guess it's still at the first page among 200million competitors.

In the end I would even prefer a non-hyphenated domain name as long as it's not too lengthy to be remembered. I often think hyphenated ones as scammer sites (using more than one hyphen as in your example).

[FDJA]

From my personal experience, I'd say that I have found a domain with keyphrase to be one of the smaller things that can be done to help with seo. It's obviously not a main consideration to search engines, otherwise sites like "ebay", "google", "cnn", "amazon" etc would not be holding their own. Probably every web designer has their own ideas of the order or importance with regards to the designing an seo site. I don't even get all that fancy or worried about it, because today's search engines do most of the work for you... Once a site is "indexed" the crawlers to the rest. All you need to do is follow simple design practices and good content that's key phrase rich and on topic, but not spammy.

Hyphenated domains, while handy for that smaller aspect of seo and primary key-phrase optimization make sense, but for some reason they can hurt as much as help... I've used both and have settled on the non-hyphenated versions as the best choice.

[pvanderwal]

that's great feedback and advice, thanks to all who sent comments through, this is a great site with a v friendly and helpful community - thanks again!