Hyphens in Keywords

[BasicECommerce]

I know that hyphens/dashes are suggested for keywords in SEO. But do the search engines read SEM keywords the same? Is "remote control" and "remote-control" the same or unique with exact match? Does it still read the "-" as a space rendering it not necessary? Thanks for your help.

BEC

[theppcman]

The answer depends on the search engine. my wife has a domain
wall-art-uk.com and wallartuk.com the first comes up no1 in Yahoo for wall art uk and the scond comes first in Google (uk Search!)

So my advice get both domains if possible and use a 404 re-direct for the other.
As far as keywords are concerned it doesnt matter so remote control is just as effective as remote-control but, if someone types in remote-control this will make remote-control the winner!

Hope this helps

Damien

[BasicECommerce]

Thanks for the input. But I'm more concerned about SEM keywords set to 'exact match'.

Will the search engines read 'easy-to-ride' the same as 'easy to ride' in SEM?

[theppcman]

Do both,
When using exact match some people will type in the words with the hyphen, some without. On an exact match AdWords will match the text exactly so you will miss out on the with hyphen keyword. Phrase is different and does ignore the hyphen.

As always, test test test!

[bradbox]

I just ran the example above, searching in Google for 'Remote control' and 'Remote-control', and received ever so subtly different results. Try it with your own hyphenated keyword and see what happens.

[stevendennis]

if you do enough optimization and create backlinks for your both keywords it will show on SERPs.i don't think hyphen will make much difference as ranking is concerned.

[deanpowel71]

I think it largely depends on the Search engines.

[rapidvectorseo]

In my opinion nobody searching with dashes, without hyphen is more effective.

[sansoftonline01]

•Include the keywords within the title tag so that robots of search engine get the instant idea what your page is all about. In addition to this, make sure that keyword is also included within the body’s page.
•Avoid spamming of keyword meta tag or description tag by overstuffing it with keywords.
•SEO friendly content is basically indexed by the major search engines like Yahoo and Google; therefore do not use doorway pages as they are only used by robots, not by humans. Needless to say, unique and well-written content wisely stuffed with primary and secondary keywords is the king which ensures to bring desired traffic to the website.
•If unique content is considered as king, then quality links are considered as queens. Building a network of effective backlinks well-stuff with keyword phrases surely going to bring desired traffic to the website.
•Keep on adding new and fresh contents at regular basis for improving rankings of the website. For search engines, new content aids in adding relevancy to the website
•Do not forget to use keyword phrases and keywords appositely in domain name, text links and in image ALT attributes.
•It is important to note that make a link on the desired keyword at your website. For example, if your keyword is “electronic gadget”, then make link on electronic gadget rather than on “click here” link.
Though, the list of SEO tips is quite extensive, yet these best SEO techniques are widely used for improving the rankings.

Search Marketing Company (http://www.sansoftonline.com)

[dannyb]

Google say that hypens are read as a space but when I bid on the normal version and the hypenated version, the hypenated version of the word comes out cheaper so it looks like they are seen differently, so bid on both. I am assuming by SEM you mean AdWords?

[expertsguy]

Hi all,

According to me that the hyphens are read as the space but some where it can be seen differently or for the keywords that effects best.

Thanks.....

[MAaron]

In my opinion nobody searching with dashes, without hyphen is more effective.

I would agree. People do not use hyphens when searching - at least, not yet.

Regards,
Melanie

[Caitlyn]

Google read only phase.. so we can give hypen also.. that's not a problem

[seovcim]

There is a lot of confusion about the use of hyphens being used in domain names. While researching hyphenated domain names I found a lot of conflicting information so I will give you a distilled view of what is currently believed to be the facts regarding hyphens in domains.

[AussieWebmaster]

with the proliferation of domains it is hard at times to get a domain without them - in the case of pages there are many CMSs that add them and as long as this is a process the engines will recognize that