This really worked for me...Thanks

James · #1 (**permalink**) 03-21-2008, 08:47 PM

Wow am I surprised, and excited about what happened to me today. And I want to thank whoever put up the information about hyphens and search a while back.

I am working on a site. My time for this project has been extremely limited so I am working on it a little at a time and am not even ready to let people know about it yet. I have had it up a few months, however, so I can see what I am doing in fact. But I now think I will put on the accelerator quickly.

I had the .com name as one word (three words joined into one). Someone posted here that Google search sees hyphenated words as separate words. So even though I haven't liked them personally I purchased the hyphenated version and simply put a redirect on it perhaps two months ago.

Someone asked me today if I had searched for my key words lately and I had not so I punched them in. To my great surprise I came up on page one, listing number nine! I still don't want to discuss my site (I will soon) but I have to tell you that the two words I entered are probably two of the most common words in internet search. In fact I got 18,100,000 results! And I was number nine.

Thanks again for the tip. I really believe that is the only significant factor at play. For what it is worth, I very highly recommend it. Obviously.

nixwebo · #2 (**permalink**) 03-30-2008, 10:55 AM

I am glad to hear the great results, congratulations!

I am curious though, if you have a domain name without hyphens, does it make it harder to get ranked in Google? I am not sure that has been the case for my sites. I have no hyphens and if you search the web address as separate words, there all the first listing?

Is that from the domain name or site content, I don't know?

lisa · #3 (**permalink**) 03-30-2008, 11:16 AM

That's great James! To answer your question, nixwebo I still believe search engines look at the entire picture. I believe hyphens played a much larger role back in the day when SEO was still new but now the top players are content and inbound links. If the keyword phrase you are ranking for is less competitive then I could see where the hyphens may make a small difference.

James, I still believe that if you were able to get a lot of inbound links to your non hyphenated domain, you would have eventually got ranked better. Did the hyphens expedite the process? Maybe. Only Google knows this for sure.

I've been ranked #1 with hyphens and no hyphens, and in my opinion, this shows there is definitely a "big picture" scenario working.

Bottom line, IMO. If there are two sites.... one with hyphens and one without. In the long run, the site that will hold the better rank for the keyword phrase in question is going to be the site with the highest quality inbound links and relevant content.

I still prefer non hyphenated domains and the only reason I register hyphens is if the name is more than 2 words (2createawebsite excluded 'cause I didn't think that name out enough back in 2002 when I registered it.

)

James · #4 (**permalink**) 03-30-2008, 11:29 AM

nixwebo

This is an area I haven't studied as much as I would like. I have focused mostly on content (not much of which is online yet) and on improving my html and css, (also php and javascript a little). I would like to study google search more later (if any real info is available).

What I know is that when I only had my domain name without hyphens my ranking was insignificant. When I added the hyphenated domain name and simply redirected it to the original site, my site jumped to page one number nine. I have hovered in that area (dropping back to number eleven, which was page two) and now back. This was out of search results over 18 million at first and now up to over 22 million on two very common words.

My online content has not improved a lot during this time because I have been sending out email newsletters with my primary content so I don't know of any other factors that could have had a significant influence. Of course I don't have any scientific evidence one way or another. Very soon I will be upgrading my design and changing my distribution to put most of it on line. Then I will post this site in my signature.

James · #5 (**permalink**) 03-30-2008, 11:58 AM

Lisa,

You posted while I was writing so my previous post doesn't reflect what you said, just nixwebo's. I like everything you said and certainly hope my content, even what I have so far, is drawing the rating! I don't even know if I have any links pointing to me because I have resisted the temptation to get sidetracked on anything else until I have time to get my content to where I am satisfied with it (it will always get top consideration).

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