A lot of people register hyphenated domain names stuffed with keywords because they still think it will help them with search engine rankings. (Hyphens are used to separate out the individual keywords so search engines can identify them).
This is why you'll frequently see crazy looking website addresses like the one below..or worse.
http://www.keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4.com
The bad news for people who do this is that most search engines are now ignoring keywords in domain names due to abuse by spammers creating domain names like the sort above.
Note - Search engines like Google still take note of keywords that appear in URLs after the domain name. So it's still worth including them in directory, page and other file names
e.g. www.yourcompany.com/keyword1-keyword2.htm.
The Case for Keyword Domains
So does this mean hyphenated domain names with keywords a waste of time?
Not necessarily.
Whilst hyphenated domain names containing keywords no longer have a direct search engine relevancy benefit they can still have a significant indirect benefit to boosting your rankings.
The reason is because of linking.
Rankings in search engines are strongly influenced by the number and quality of links pointing to a site. Search engines like Google put a lot of weight in the words used in text links (called anchor link text). Ideally pages linking to your website will do so using descriptive text containing your primary keyword(s).
For example, when other sites link to this site we encourage them to use a text link like
Viz Search Engine Marketing which contains the keywords 'search engine marketing'.
However the reality is that many sites will simply link to you by using your domain name as the text link, e.g. www.viz.co.nz. Obviously a link like this is not as effective as the one above that contains keywords.
And this is where domain names with keywords in them are of benefit. If you have such a domain name and people use it for link text then you benefit from the keywords it contains.
If you do decide to use a domain name with keywords and hyphens don't go overboard. Website urls with more than a couple of hyphens can often look pretty amateurish and are not good from a branding perspective.
Next: Hyphenated domain names tips
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This
page last updated
May 03, 2010
