Dashes in Title

[AuctionHugh]

Kathleen heard from a friend who went to an expensive SEO seminar that Search Engines love Dashes in the title best of all.

Now all our page titles look like this:

<title>Kallen-Web-Design-Kalamazoo-Michigan-Outstanding-Small-Business-Web-Design</title>

Has anyone knowledgeable heard of this before? I think it looks goofy, but our search rankings have been awfully high lately.

Thanks,
Hugh

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[bhartzer]

That's one of the goofiest thing I've heard lately. Using hyphens like that isn't very good for your website visitors (it looks rather spammy), so it most likely isn't good for the search engines.

I'd love to hear the name of the person and which "expensive SEO seminar" is giving out that "advice".

There are other factors as to why you're ranking well, not the fact that you're-putting-so-many-useless-hyphens-in-your-title-tag.

[PizdusInc]

Never heard that before... I think it is just a waste of space and it looks odd. Now, there is nothing wrong with using one or two dashes to separate terms.

[bhartzer]

PizdusInc is right. There's nothing wrong with using a few hyphens like a hyphen in between your title "phrase" and your company name. But using them with no spaces between keywords in your title tag is to spammy for me.

[realestate4sale]

I have seen some companies use the * in the title to draw attention in the SERPS. Such as:

* Onalaska Homes And Land For Sale In La Crosse County *

Do you think having the * in the title could actually hurt rankings?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

[PizdusInc]

I also have seen many different special characters (special characters meaning *, ~, », etc) in the titles... they appeared for a while in Google's results, but I have not seen them lately at all... which leads me to believe that Google removes any special characters and they do not affect rankings at all.

[garbageaccount]

What effect if any do you think a - in the domain name has on the search engines? I've found that even though we have bluedolphinmagazines.com and bluedolphin-magazines.com the - version now has a PR and is getting ranking while the other is not. Any ideas?

[PizdusInc]

I personally don't think it matters much... Google somehow picks one. I did have a similar issue with a site that had two domains, one with a dash and another without. The one with a dash had a PR5 for the longest time and was ranking well on Google. The odd thing at the time was that other search engines (Yahoo and MSN in particular) picked up, and ranked VERY well, the domain without the dash. Just recently, about a month or so ago, Google started to pick up the domain without the dash and the PR on the other dropped. Now, we did a domain level re-direct and we are stuck with a PR2. Almost all of the traffic from Google stopped, but we are still receiving tons from Yahoo and MSN.

I cannot give specific example of the client's site, and hope this is not too confusing. It seems though that the site got penalized somehow by Google (I should probably mention that both domains had exactly same content).

My advice would be, if you have same content on both domains, to re-direct the one without PR to the other.

[bhartzer]

I also have seen many different special characters

Google now removes those special characters.

[garbageaccount]

Ok that's basically what I've gotten from another thread, to get rid of the other domains and have them all 301 redirect to the domain that is getting good pr right now.

[kservik]

Originally Posted by bldlphn01

What effect if any do you think a - in the domain name has on the search engines? I've found that even though we have bluedolphinmagazines.com and bluedolphin-magazines.com the - version now has a PR and is getting ranking while the other is not. Any ideas?

It is because one of the sites are dropped in rankings because you have duplicate content.

About using hyphens: Search Engines like it, but people dont.

[Faglork]

AFAIK search engines - at least Google - split the whole phrase at the hyphen. With a TITLE like
Kallen-Web-Design-Kalamazoo-Michigan-Outstanding-Small-Business-Web-Design
you have 10 keywords in your title instead of only one.

Same applies to directory-/filenames:
/small-business/
will give you two keywords in the URL instead of one as in /smallbusiness/

Downside is, longer URLs are not user-friendly, to say the least. So you would have to use that as a second domain, and that might possibly lead to penalization because of duplicate content.

So use it deliberately, but with care:
www.michigan-webdesign.com will do better than
www.michiganwebdesign.com

Just HOW much better is another question.

Alex

[PizdusInc]

Originally Posted by faglork

Same applies to directory-/filenames:
/small-business/
will give you two keywords in the URL instead of one as in /smallbusiness/

I would have to disagree on that because google is able to pick up two keywords even if there is no dash in between them... Example, search for small business (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=small+business) and you will see in the middle of the page smallbusiness.yahoo.com and smallbusiness is highlighted. A bit further down, irs.gov has the term split up in its url.

Dashes or no dashes, best thing to do is think about how you would react to a lot of dashes in a title. If you think it will benefit a visitor, go for it.

[garbageaccount]

AFAIK search engines - at least Google - split the whole phrase at the hyphen. With a TITLE like
Kallen-Web-Design-Kalamazoo-Michigan-Outstanding-Small-Business-Web-Design
you have 10 keywords in your title instead of only one.

Same applies to directory-/filenames:
/small-business/
will give you two keywords in the URL instead of one as in /smallbusiness/

Downside is, longer URLs are not user-friendly, to say the least. So you would have to use that as a second domain, and that might possibly lead to penalization because of duplicate content.

So use it deliberately, but with care:
www.michigan-webdesign.com will do better than
www.michiganwebdesign.com

Just HOW much better is another question.

An answer I've been given to this on another board is to have a 301 redirect from the non-hyphenated domain to the hyphenated domain. I've actually decided to test the theory.

[kservik]

It is not a theory and I think you misunderstood that bit.

You do a 301 redirect to transfer all visitors (including Search Engine spiders) that try to access any site on a domain to the new one.

You should onlyy use this if you have decided to not use one of the domains anymore.

Remember that you will loose all PageRank and rankings on the old domain.