How important is a hyphen (-) for SEO?

[zoogo]

I was reading an article at www.seo-gold.com that said google doesn't parse non-hyphenated domain names as individual words, but does when they are hyphenated.

I.e. google will see friedchicken.com and give it the keyword "friedchicken", then it will see fried-chicken.com and give it the keywords "fried" and "chicken"

What the article didn't explain, was how this practically translates to SEO.

I've found a domain name for my site that I like, and am trying to decide if I should get the non-hyphenated, or hyphenated version.

There's 5 letters before the hyphen, and 5 letters after it, both are whole words that are related to my site's content, but fairly vaguely, and are vague words themselves.

Anyway, I wanted to know if the possible benefits of having a higher SEO on google will outweigh the downside, which is that I assume people may become frustrated typing in that hyphen getting to my site the first, or subsequent times.

Is the SEO/hit increase great from inserting that hyphen? I'd particularly like some input with someone who has a word-word.com and same wordword.com domain with statistics.

I also want to know if having more keywords in the domain (through hyphen) better for general SEO, meaning if it will get my page ranked higher, regardless of what the keywords (searched for) are, simply versus the same non-hyphenated name.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Keral_Patel]

Maybe because there are too many urls using friedchicken in their recipe sites :D

 

[gemstar]

Im hungry now :p

 

[zoogo]

maybe smoe chinese fastfood^

 

[joeljonathan]

I was reading an article at www.seo-gold.com that said google doesn't parse non-hyphenated domain names as individual words, but does when they are hyphenated.

Maybe 10 years ago but Google's algorithm is definitely sophisticated enough today to parse non hyphenated non hyphenated domain names into individual words.

A domain name has no impact on SEO whatsoever. I'm talking from experience.

Actually, you have no clue what you are talking about. Sorry.

Having an exact match keyword only domain name that matches the keyword phrase exactly weighs very heavily in the Google algorithm for ranking your site for that keyword phrase.

If you want to test this out then spend $8 and register a nonsense domain name with a made up word like ytueoudfwrs.com and then slap up any unique content you want on the domain name and as soon as the domain name is spidered then you will rank for "ytueoudfwrs". Guaranteed. (Although, this post may outrank you until you get a backlink or 2 lol)

 

[seven]

A domain name has no impact on SEO whatsoever. I'm talking from experience.

This is absolutely, positively wrong.

 

[shockie]

the hyphen is not that important for seo as search engines are very good at determining what keywords are in a domain, among other things.

 

[gemstar]

Hyphen is the way to go!! One day everyone will be in tears for not getting these sleepers