I have a client who has both the hyphen and un hyphened versions of his domain.
Can decide what is the best method? any ideas

I just purchased one hyphenated domain at USD2.7 while same domain un-hyphenated which has been registered and now is for sales at USD1000. I can not understand how people evaluate that.

Thanks so very much for an awesome site!

For example my site seo-gold.com covers SERPs including the keyword SEO, but it doesn’t help with any of these keywords which pages on this site target:

keywords domains search engine optimisation optimization PageRank PR tutorial and so on, this domain name helps with one SERP and that’s SEO (and Gold, though that’s branding).

If the domain was seogold.com it would be optimized for ZERO SERPs. As a side note that domain was registered at least 8 years ago and is redirecting to another domain currently parked on Godaddy. A Google search for seogold doesn’t find either of the domains, as it happens this site is number 1. If someone offered me seogold.com for free I probably wouldn’t want it, might check if there’s any backlinks to it and see if they have any value, but the domain name in it self is worthless.

There is no value buying domains only to 301 redirect them to another domain unless you add links to the domains. If I registered seo-gold-tutorial-optimization.com and 301 redirected it to this site how would a search engine know it exists without links to seo-gold-tutorial-optimization.com ???

Unless you plan to link to domains you are 301 redirecting there’s nothing SEO wise to gain from owning them, they won’t pass any SEO benefit. Although there’s a theoretical value in linking to domains you are 301 redirecting it’s costly, you have to add links for starters and a 301 redirect costs link benefit. I assume the cost of a 301 redirect is the equivalent of linking to an intermediate page with a single link that links to another page with the same anchor text of the first link. this will likely cost around 15% of the PR the original link could pass, that’s costly. Makes more sense to create pages targeting the SERPs within the domain name and link to those pages.

There’s no real SEO difference between seo-gold.com/seo-tutorial/ and seo-gold-seo-tutorial.com/

I’ve only once purchased domains to stop others registering them and that was for branding purposes. I develop WordPress SEO themes called Talian 5 and Stallion 6 and have registered multiple relevant domains. I wouldn’t register non-hyphenated to stop others registering them, waste of money, they have no SEO value. I generally wouldn’t register hyphenated domains I don’t plan to use, it’s not hard to find a derivative of a SERP or another tld that works.

David

Thanks so much for an awesome article!!

Thanks in advance.

Jaxanne

Do you really believe Google would as a matter of course downgrade hyphenated domains because for a period of time they were used for SEO reasons? Now the SEO myth hyphenated domains are penalised in Google has become a well known “SEO Fact” there’s isn’t even a slight reason to downgrade them (not that they would, not how Google works).

Just a bunch of webmasters, my site was downgraded, it was a hyphenated domain therefore hyphenated domains are penalised.

Same argument with tld’s, ignoring country specific benefits there’s no difference. So org is no better or worse than com or info.

Check the SEO Tutorial SERP in Google, 4 of the top 10 use hyphenated domains with the keyword SEO within them. For the SEO SERP it’s 3.

David

Regarding TLDs, I’ve seen a .org rocket up the results in very competitive space, so it made me wonder.

Here is my question:

Let’s say I’m starting a site to sell buffalo chips.
I’ve done my homework and realized “buffalo chips” is by far the most desirable search phrase.
I’ve given up on finding something brandable; and prefer something with SEO juice.

What do you think of the relative value of these three choices?

buffalo-chips(dot)net
buffalochips(dot)org
chipsbuffalo(dot)com

Looking forward to your thoughts.
tj

and Google recognises it in the SERPs as limousines in Sydney area code.

I do use hyphens though, especially when there are 2 s’s for eg.

I tend to buy keyword rich domain names but they aren’t always the name of the biz. Do you recommend buying biz domain name
eg. mycompanyname.com.au

and redirect to keyword rich url with a 301 redirect? This wouldn’t affect ranking would it?

Thanks