Do hyphens make a difference in SEO?

[Phare]

Would hyphens make a difference in SEO?

For example, if somebody is searching for a two word phrase like "free money" and you have the domain names "freemoney.com" and "free-money.com"

Does it really matter or would they get the same type of SEO?

 

[lexisdomains]

Not really. The only difference is that Google will index you for fewer competing sites.
The key is setting up your on-page optimization to reflect optimization of your keyword without hyphen. (e.g keyword domain = new-cars.com / optimize meta, alta, title tags for keyword = new cars).

 

[bmugford]

As far as I know Stock-Market.com is seen exactly the same by a search engine as StockMarket.com

Brad

 

[godinu]

people have said hyphens helped SEO recognize terms easier than if the terms were smashed together; for instance, let's say you typed in "free credit report" at google. free credit report and free-credit-report look the same to a search engine, so if u have that hyphenated term in a url, it may show up in the results more readily than freecreditreport. (this is assuming you haven't done any other SEO for the page)

 

[buyauthority]

actually hyphen are for search engines and non-hyphens are for type-ins. That's how I see it.

 

[onewordonly]

Hypens work well in many situations, not the best to market offline but for seo etc then no problems online!

 

[DNabc]

I have quite a few myself, and searched a lot about this subject, if you only have 1 hyphen, or 2 at most, no problem. More than that you will trigger some flags...

 

[DubDubDubDot]

Google penalizes hyphened domains until they've been listed for awhile. I don't know what the threshold is though.... if it takes 1 hyphen or several, or if it just gets worse with more hyphens. This is their way of holding down spam sites with domains like buy---viagra-here.com.

This is the reason why people behind the h-y-p-h-e-n.com movement are to be considered pretty clueless.

 

[godinu]

one place where hyphens probably are helpful is in wordpress posts. Instead of a page like 12397912.php it would be get-stuff-free.php -- much more readable in SEO terms

 

[cogger]

also help to break down words in the serps Ex: SheLooksHot may be having trouble read by search engines to define. she look shot. she-looks-hot would be better for serps but SheLooksHot would be better for branding. Better off to secure with and w/o hypens

 

[bgmv]

this is very interesting, i always wondered about this because i actually like hyphens (sometimes). obviously a non hyphenated domain would be better for branding but as others said sometimes the hyphen makes a domain more legible. i have domains like hardwood-flooring.net and business-degrees.net that i am trying to develop i just always thought the hyphen would effect the rankings.

 

[jjbrownman1]

I think if the name sounds good with a hyphen then why not give it a go.