Hypenation of a domain name

**DROBNJAK** · 17-07-09

Hi,

I found a free domain for my product, matching its search keyword phrase, like: blue-widget.com I put a hyphen, as shown here. Whole site currently has only one single page with about 600 words, lots of keywords, one pic.

I submitted the site to Google two weeks ago, and site had been indexed promptly. But currently site is not even on the page 10, not to mention the page 1 on the Google search.

Is there a problem with using hyphen, like blue-widget.com, should I have used bluewidget.com? Or is it just a question of waiting a bit more?

**UKJay** · 17-07-09

I'd wait - 2 weeks is a little early for Google to get into gear. Plus, they are allegedly weighting search engine rankings using the age of the site as one factor so new sites are not bouncing to the top as they once were I'm, afraid.

Regarding hyphenation - plenty of people will tell you its not a good idea. Personally, I'm glad so many people think so because then all the great keyword combinations are available to me

I notice that when my sites are returned for keywords in Google, the keywords in the URL are also highlighed so, as far as I am concerned, there is no difference.

And thinking about it, if variations like these are being discriminated against, we might as well all pack up and go home because apart from future niche products, I'd guess most of the 'value' domains are now taken for existing products, services, brands and so on.

**jmarch** · 18-07-09

There should be no problem with the hypen in terms of coming up in the SERPS.

You might consider adding some more content to your site (in the form of other pages to inform your site visitors) also link building from relevant themed sites would be the next step.

You don't need to submit sites to the search engines any more, inbound links will do the job for you. You can check if you site is in the index (which it may not be f you have no inbound links) by coping the URL into the search bar, if the site comes up it's in if not it's not.

**UKJay** · 22-07-09

An update to this - i just grabbed http://www.find-a-financial-adviser.com which I think is quite a find! Don't be registering as I'll be developing this over the coming weeks - but I believe that this is one hell of a keyphrase at the moment and Yahoo is giving me some great positioning based on certain keyphrases - I'll be interested to see if I can get this particular keyphrase to page 1 in Yahoo reasonably quickly. Google can take a back seat on this venture as I have several thousand UK financial advisers to target from a mailing list available from the FSA ( if I can get a copy of it!!)

Will keep you all updated on my progress

**DROBNJAK** · 23-07-09

Originally Posted by UKJay

... Google can take a back seat on this venture as I have several thousand UK financial advisers to target from a mailing list available from the FSA ( if I can get a copy of it!!)

Will keep you all updated on my progress

;-) so funny the way we go with them domain names. I've just got something similar.

You just said two interesting things in one sentence. You are going to ignore Big G, how dare you?

Is the FSA list for sale or free? Were you thinking as well of scraping the info from Yellow Pages or a similar web directory?

**UKJay** · 23-07-09

It's not free so I reckon I'll be doing a scraping exercise to do a one off mailshot from publically available email addresses. I might even use Google as my source material

**UKJay** · 23-07-09

Whoops - there goes http://www.find-a-mortgage-adviser.com as well! I'm on a roll

I won't be totally ignoring Google but I'll be setting up site directories to flog listing space (as well as populate with a few choice affiliate links) and Google is alot tougher to crack on directories so I think that if I can get Yahoo and Bing as my main focus then I should be able to do better. Over time, Google should pick up the directories through backlinks and page rank.

**cannonb** · 23-07-09

I agree, hyphantion can actually be a good thing for getting the meaning of your site across more clearly and avoiding confusion.

Ambiguous domains are discussed here...Domain name - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It made me chuckle

www.easyart.com

**jmarch** · 24-07-09

Hypenation can work will in the SERPS it can help users see what you site offers. People always think about ranking but you can also increase your chances by making your site title, description and in this case domain name seem the most appropriate to your target market.