Multi-Word-Keyphrase in domain name wo/ or with dashes?
-
SEO Gurus,
There seems to be a tendency that whenever you need to optimize a project for a multi-word key phrase, lets say for example "hostels in boston" SEOs see it as a best practice to refelct the key phrase in the domain without dashes yet when being used in a directory/page name context dashers are being used? Does anyone have any experience to share on this topic what works better? From my experience using dashes has been quite successful in the past but I am questioning this approach for a new project I am about to start.
To clarify the question, in your eyes what would work better for the keyphrase "hotels in boston"
Thanks /Thomas
-
There is evidence that Google sees hyphens in the root domain as spam. A lot of lead generation publishers, unable to afford domains like www.freecreditreport.com will resort to buying spammy domains like www.free-credit-report.com. A lot of porn sites utilize this tactic as well.
I would definitely steer clear of this as a tactic...most sites that I see using this almost always have manipulated link graphs, paid links, etc etc.
Hope this helps. Be well!
-
Completely agree. Plus I think I remember the latest ranking factors report stating that hyphens in the domain name had a negative ranking factor.
-
For the domain name, www.hotelsinboston.com would be the preferred choice.
For the URL, you are correct if you had mysite.com then the preferred page link would be mysite.com/hotels-in-boston
The reason is more to do with users then with rankings. If you say "go to hotelsinboston.com" then close to 100% of users will understand your request and land on the correct site. If you say "go to hotels hyphen in hyphen boston.com" you will lose a certain percentage of users who will forget or not understand the hyphens.
It's the exact same idea as why a .com address is preferred over a .net or any other TLD. If your site is hotelsinboston.net, a certain percentage of your clients will wind up on the .com site. It's just more natural for people to add .com to any business name.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will this URL structure: "domain.com/s/content-title" cause problems?
Hey all, We have a new in-house built too for building content. The problem is it inserts a letter directly after the domain automatically. The content we build with these pages aren't all related, so we could end up with a bunch of urls like this: domain.com/s/some-calculator
Technical SEO | | joshuaboyd
domain.com/s/some-infographic
domain.com/s/some-long-form-blog-post
domain.com/s/some-product-page Could this cause any significant issues down the line?0 -
English and French under the same domain
A friend of mine runs a B&B and asked me to check his freshly built website to see if it was <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> compliant.
Technical SEO | | coolhandluc
The B&B is based in France and he's targeting a UK and French audience. To do so, he built content in english and french under the same domain:
https://www.la-besace.fr/ When I run a crawl through screamingfrog only the French content based URLs seem to come up and I am not sure why. Can anyone enlighten me please? To maximise his business local visibility my recommendation would be to build two different websites (1 FR and 1 .co.uk) , build content in the respective language version sites and do all the link building work in respective country sites. Do you think this is the best approach or should he stick with his current solution? Many thanks1 -
Treatment of domain names in content that are not actually a link
From PR activity we've found that lots of newspaper sites will include reference to a domain name in an article but not actually make this a link through to the domain. For example we will see text like: For further information read the full report at www.bluewidget.com Of course we make attempts to contact the newspaper to request they make it a link but this doesn't always achieve a result. So the question is, does Google place any value for the identified domain in a case like this?
Technical SEO | | bjalc20110 -
Multiple sub domain appearing
Hi Everyone, Hope were well!. Have a strange one!!. New clients website http://www.allsee-tech.com. Just found out he is appearing for every subdomain possible. a.alsee-tech.com b.allsee-tech.com. I have requested htaccess as this is where I think the issue lies but he advises there isn't anything out of place there. Any ideas in case it isn't? Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
Multi-domain content and meta data feed
Hi, I am working with a client whose web developer has offered to build a CMS that auto-feeds meta-data and product descriptions (on-page content) to two different websites which have two completely different URL's (primary domain names) associated with them. Please see screenshots attached for examples. The entire reason this has been offered is to avoid duplicate content issues. The client has two E-Commerce websites but only one content management system that can update both simultaneously. The work-around shown in the screenshots is the developers attempt at ensuring that both sites have unique meta data and on-page content associated with each product. Can anyone advise whether they foresee that this may cause any issues from an SEO perspective. Thanks in advance wM3ngsj.png KtBun98.png
Technical SEO | | SteveK640 -
Rebranding / Redirecting
Hi I have a client who wants to re-brand their shopify clothing store under new domain name. Whilst still a clothing store its going to have different department structure and product pages and will hence be a different store/site. Is there anyway to pass any of the history/authority of existing site to the new one such as 301 redirecting the top level pages of existing site to nearest equivalent pages of new site etc or best to just redirect the old site domain to the new ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
.com domain is an iframe copy of a .net domain?
Hey folks, This one is over my head. I'm helping out a friend's dental office website (www.capitolperiodontal.com), and their home page source code points to the .net TLD for its content apparently: | | <title></span>http://www.capitolperiodontal.com/</title> http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html" /> rows="100%" id="dd_frameset_0001"> src="http://www.capitolperiodontal.net/" name="dd_content_0001" framespacing="0" frameborder="0" noresize="noresize" title="capitolperiodontal.com" /> <noframes></noframes> My idea was to load all the content from the .net to the .com, then redirect the .net to the .com as it has better domain authority and is, well a .com. Any insights what this iframe biz is all about and if my strategy above is ok? Many thanks folks! john
Technical SEO | | juanzo0070 -
Mobile Domain Setup
Hi, If I want to serve a subset of pages on my mobile set from my desktop site or the content is significantly different, i.e. it is not one to one or pages are a summarised version of the desktop, should I use m.site.com or is it still better to use site.com? Many thanks any help appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MarkChambers0