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advice Google's John Mueller on Hyphenated Keyword-Driven Domain Names

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A consideration that caused hyphenated domain names to fall out of favor is that they have an untrustworthy appearance and that can work against conversion rates because trustworthiness is an important factor for conversions.
Mueller is right about picking a domain name that won’t lock your site into one topic. When a site grows in popularity the natural growth path is to expand the range of topics the site coves. But that’s hard to do when the domain is locked into one rigid keyword phrase. That’s one of the downsides of picking a “Best + keyword + reviews” domain, too. Those domains can’t grow bigger and look tacky, too...
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I mentioned it before and I'll mention it again. The reason hyphenated domains were considered less serious was because they were mainly registered for SEO. Brooklynplumbers.com, brooklyn-plumbers.com, and brooklyn--plumbers.com got the same SEO-boost. So if you couldn't get one, just pad it out with hyphens. So what happened is that less serious sites ended up using hyphenated domains. It set a standard, and here we are today.
 
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