Hyphens in URL for SEO

[Burty]

Hi

I've just been having a conversation with regard to a new domain name purchase with hyphens included.

What I'd like to know is how are hyphens seen by the search engine? its being suggested to me that "example-holiday-s.com" is purchased as "example-holidays" is taken.

How does the search engine see the "-s" at the end? Is it all just seen as "exampleholidays" ?

I know it looks very odd but it solves the problem?

[mjtaylor]

Hyphenated domains are fine for search engines. Most search engines can read strings whether they are hyphenated or not.

I think I would not get a domain that has -s to pluralize, though. It is already a challenge to get humans to remember your domain with hyphens.

[industriousfoe201]

I read on this just a bit ago, hyphens are considered spaces in domains and sub domains in Google search engine. So "my-domain.com/forum-thread" would be read "my domain.com / forum thread" by Google spiders. Underscores _ on the other hand are not read as spaces they are bad for domain

[downloadvyp]

indeed,hypens are spaces for google,so it would not be good to have something like example-holiday-s.com

[IlikeMarketing]

I would not do that. Why?
1,) if the visitor is typing the URL directly on the browser bar.. once they missed all the hyphens or the "s" at the end, they may go to different places

2.) Hyphenated domain personally think it is harder to memorize. Heck who will remember all the "-" or "s" in the first place which makes domain hard to be branded.

So if I would register the domain I will just use exampleholidays.com, If it is taken try to add an extra word, or even you can use numbers... but I don't recommend using hyphens.

[Yiwu]

hyphens are space in Google's Eye,

You can search in Google.com for "-" and "_"

Your search - - - did not match any documents.
but the "_" returns SERPs..

So just a space...

[digital29]

Why not try holidayexamples.com ? It is available

[mjtaylor]

I read on this just a bit ago, hyphens are considered spaces in domains and sub domains in Google search engine. So "my-domain.com/forum-thread" would be read "my domain.com / forum thread" by Google spiders. Underscores _ on the other hand are not read as spaces they are bad for domain

I think I would say, underscores are not bad for a domain, they are simply not unavailable in a domain. Underscores are often used in URLs and while hyphens are preferable, Google has no trouble picking our query strings from your domain or file name with or without spaces.

[jimmy03]

Hyphenated Domains are fine from Search Engine point of view, but when it comes to visitor's point of view, they can find it difficult to remember the hyphen, so chances are that you may loose direct traffic to your website...

[MayaLocke]

I would not hyphenate a single letter in a domain. That said hyphenated domains can be very helpful for SEO.

[coolguy27]

That's an old news about using hyphen in URL. We know hyphens are seen as word separators and hyphens have an SEO value.

According to Vanessa Fox:


Having keywords and hyphens in URLs is important from a user experience perspective. You want the highest click-through rates. If you have keywords in your URLs, you give people an indication of what they are going to see as they click through. Hyphens do a good job of separating words. Underscores are often not seen, and users wonder if it’s a space or an underscore, because links get underlined. Readers may not get the URL right. So from a usability perspective, use hyphens.

More information at http://www.webproworld.com/search-engine-optimization-forum/76831-better-search-engine-optimization-underscore-hyphen.html