Need advice on use of hyphen '-' in DN

[tarponchaser]

hello all,
I would like some advice on whether a domain name with the hyphen (eg. word-file.com ) has any benefits or value compared to w/o the hyphen (ie. wordfile.com ). I wanted the former but it has been taken & I'm not so sure I want to take the one with hyphen (still available).

I see many more experienced DN traders refer to the Overture & Google numbers (which i don't exactly understand anyway ... any one can point to a particular link on these measurements in the forum ?? I tried search but did not see a specific post).

Thanks & have a good weekend folks !

cheers,
Suzie

 

[NAS125]

Ok, here is the thing.
-s are allowed, but people do not like them. A name with a - loses alot of value. I do not exactly know how to explain it... but, I hope you get the point. I do understand overture mind you. http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ Here is a link. Overture is a tool that shows you the amount of times a certain key word/phrase was typed into a search engine the past month. Clearly, the higher the number the better. If there is overture with an extension, i.e typing in www.domain.com and still getting numbers, the name is very good and popular! I hope I helped in anyway
P.S, although it is stated in DNforum rules under respectful busines or w/e... try to limit advertising the names you are going to register. Some people will steal it from you and try to sell it to you. Or so I have heard.

 

[etech-peter]

Hyphen in a domain name has no benefits from the search engine point of view. Hyphen is good for parsing the two keywords in a domain. There is a chance that you may loose a lot of type in traffic to the non hyphenated name as many people tend to forget the hyphen while typing a name in the toolbar.

 

[DNjet]

the overture tool does not recognize hyphens, so when you put in a hyphen domain in overture tool and a score comes up it shows only a space between the words, and thats most likely what the users searched on , a space and not the hyphen, so it is inacurate.

 

[tarponchaser]

Thanks for all your feedback & tips ... I really appreciate it !!! I'm beginning to feel that it is very hard to just tell someone a domain with the hyphen inside; i tested it on 3 friends, and all felt the hyphen is a little too difficult to remember.

cheerio,
Suzie

 

[sleddogrob]

Great question tarponchaser,

To the experts, besides type in traffic do hyphen names help with seo rankings when it comes to key words?

example: domainnames.com to domain-names.com

Obviously any great keyword domain names are already taken , yet when I check even the hyphened name versions of them they are also gone. So their must be some value to hyphened domain names when it comes to keywords and seo rankings.

Yes / No ?

 

[DNjet]

Great question tarponchaser,

To the experts, besides type in traffic do hyphen names help with seo rankings when it comes to key words?

example: domainnames.com to domain-names.com

Obviously any great keyword domain names are already taken , yet when I check even the hyphened name versions of them they are also gone. So their must be some value to hyphened domain names when it comes to keywords and seo rankings.

Yes / No ?

Yes, if you know what your doing.

 

[Ian]

domains with hyphens seldom have a lot of traffic and should be avoid unless the traffic is obvious.

 

[stevesko]

domains with hyphens seldom have a lot of traffic and should be avoid unless the traffic is obvious.

Or you can generate the traffic...

If you are waiting for typein traffic, you will be waiting a long time.

If its a good area with low competition, reg the name, build a site and seo optimize. I found a good niche less than a month ago and did this, now the site is in the top 5 for the top keywords in Google and MSN (still not found on Y)... I have adsense on it now while I build a amazon shop for the product, a $350 item getting 4000 searches a month on Overture... Earning $4 per day while I wait.... not bad for a 6.95 investment...

Steve

 

[sleddogrob]

Thanks for the great advice folks.

Stevesko... I was not thinking type in traffic, just grabbing the hypened names and then doing the seo optimization thing. Happy to hear about your investment.
It is always great when your investment can pay for itself

 

[stevesko]

It would be nice to do this every day. I just havn't figured out how to keep finding gems like that. For me SEO is the easy part...

Steve

 

[sleddogrob]

LOL, I agree totally! Knock on wood but some search engines have been kind to me.

 

[burnsinternet]

Maybe I got lucky. I am pretty new, and I stupidly reg'd a .net with a dash because the name was so attractive. It gets traffic and clicks and easily covers its reg fee plus profit. What is the SEO optimization? Is that better than parking pages?

 

[DNjet]

Maybe I got lucky. I am pretty new, and I stupidly reg'd a .net with a dash because the name was so attractive. It gets traffic and clicks and easily covers its reg fee plus profit. What is the SEO optimization? Is that better than parking pages?

SEO = search engine optimization

meaning your domain is on a website that has content that is optimized for related keywords to the domain , standard parking pages are one page and have zero content resulting in poor SEO, search engines can bring more traffic and revenue to your domains over time. A transition from parking to developing.