I got some interesting questions in the comments of the How To Choose A Domain Name For Your Niche Website lesson, here’s one of them:
So a yourkeyword.net is always preferred over a your-keyword.com?
Do most people feel .net is more acceptable than dashes?
The question is basically whether it’s a good idea to use dashes in domains that you buy.
I personally have some domains with dashes and I’ve seen a few drawbacks. I’m not totally against them, but to be honest, with the drawbacks that they have I can’t justify going with them when there are better options.
There are two big drawbacks that I see with dashed-domains:
- The resale value is lowered.
- The click-through rate from search engines to your site is lower. No one would be able to test this without having two sites that rank for the same keyword – fortunately I have seen this situation and can tell you that the dashes seem to affect this. It isn’t going to affect it by a huge amount but dashed domains do tend to look a little more spammy than domains that aren’t dashed and this will make a small amount of people skip over them.
The question asked more specifically if you should choose ‘yourkeyword.net’ over ‘your-keyword.com’ and this is a definite yes. With yourkeyword.net you have an exact keyword match in the domain and this will give you a ranking advantage. I don’t have any evidence personally that ‘your-keyword.com’ gives you the exact match bonus with Google, in fact my experience tells me that it seems not to.
I don’t really know (or care to be honest) what most people prefer. All I know is what my results have told me and that’s what I trust.
A great answer to a question I’ve had in my head for a while. I suspected this was the outcome, but it’s good to have confirmation.
On an unrelated note, my mother-in-law seems to have taken over my Gravatar. Hmmm…
I have domains with dashes and domains without dashes and haven’t ever noticed that it makes much of a difference either way in traffic or rankings. But a few advantages of no dashes are that it’s easier to type, shorter, and much easier to tell people the url.
Ah, this is definitely enlightening. I’ve seen some arguments about this in other webmaster forums, but it’s good that you pointed out that .net is better than domains with dashes.
What if you’re desperate for that keyword domain, but all you have is a .info option?
Lorna .info isn’t a good option. There seems to be a ranking delay with .info. I would opt for a .com with an extra word.
In my experience, I would ALWAYS go for a non-dashed domain over a dashed domain!
I’ve found there to be little-to-no difference between different TLD’s as they relate to search results or visitor retention.
I’ve had good keyword domains in the .ws TLD outperform similar sites at .com domains.
The fact is that people aren’t as dumb as the ‘dot com is the only one worth registering/buying’ would have you believe. Certainly, your visitors will have no problem remembering that your domain ends in .net or .ws if your website is good and offers a quality experience for your visitors.
What about using the keyword in a subdomain? Is that beneficial at all – like mykeyword.generaldomainname.com? or does the benefit come only if the keyword is in the main part of the domain name?
-Dave
I find that with keywords in the domain it is great if you can get them.
Don’t go overboard though as Google might say something is a little fishy.
but a 3 keyword phrase is fine I think.
Otherwise go for a shorter, more brandable name.
Keywords in the main domain maybe account for 5% of the SEO factor in my opinion.
The search engine I used to work for considered banning or heavily penalizing sites with dashes in their names, so I never use them.
I have personnaly gotten good rankings with all 3 of COM, NET and INFO, both dashed and non-dashed.
If a keyword is worth building the site around then I wouldn’t let the fact that the exact match non-dashed COM name is not available stop me.
I was searching for more information on Should I Use Dashes Or No Dashes In My Domains? on Dogpile and this page was the first site I saw about it. Thanks for your opinion and now I know where to find informative stuff in the future
I did not put on a swim suit for ten years simply because I was ashamed of my cellulite. Now I just really don’t care. So what does that say about me?