Quick URL Question...

[hairycornflakes]

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ok here's a quickie....

is veryaceaffiliatewebsite.com going to be better (in seo terms) than very-ace-affiliate-website.com?

Or, are the identical in terms of seo?

cheers,

hc

[hairycornflakes]

obviously if the keyword is "very ace affiliate site"!

the reason I ask is...

i find that if its a pretty long domain name then it looks better if its split up!

[tbp]

Personally, if the one without hyphens is available then I would go for that.

Both are good in terms of seo, ie having the keywords in the domain in the order of the search query, but in terms of repeat traffic through people typing in your url, people are more likely to try it without hyphens than with (as that's what they are used to doing).

The best solution is to buy both, and use the one with hyphens for your main domain, but redirect the one without hyphens to the site so it catches any visitors typing it in.

[WiganWebs]

Are you using the domain purely for search engine traffic? If so I wouldn't be too bothered about the presentation of the domain name providing your not using 5-6 keywords in the domain. However, in answer to your question, I have had better personal results without the hyphons.

Generally I try to keep my domains within 3 words, usually 2 words if I can to keyword brand the domain, and at least 2 of those words targeted to my two main keywords (in your example, 'affiliate website' being the 2 main keywords), and if you can, try to nail a domain around 3 keywords which would broaden your homepage and offpage SEO a little bit better. Such an example would be something like 'affiliatemarketingwebsite.co.uk' (for example). Then you have nailed 3 x 2 word keywords that you could broaden onto your sitewide SEO (off-pages), those being 'affiliate website', 'marketing website', and 'affiliate marketing' for you to concentrate your effort on with the added bonus of the 3 word keyphrase 'affiliate marketing website'.

I dont think the 2 extra non-targeted keywords (very ace) is sufficient if your buying a domain name to generate free traffic via the search engines.

If you wanted to keyword brand your site then I think a shorter domain would be better. Taking the idea from myvouchercodes.co.uk you could go that way and create myaffiliatewebsite.co.uk or something like that which is kind of better branded than that of a long-tail keyword domain.

I hope this makes sense
Terry