Next Best if EMD isn't available

[Guest]

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[RobertFisher]

From a simple on page SEO point of view it does not matter. the dashes are irrelevant. The argument that many use is the hyphens are seen as "spammy." My belief is they are irrelevant on the whole and at times they seem to make the url more memorable. Yes, there are times they would not. Do they affect ranking +/- vs. similar content/SEO skill, etc. of small-blue-widgets.com vs. smallbluewidgets.com I do not see it. I set up sites that have and do not have hyphens for the domain. I do not see an impact A to B. I have hyphenated sites for clients that absolutely kill in their vertical and I have those without that do the same.

So, as to what to do. I say in any SEO endeavor we are dealing with 100 points of SEO. On any given project we are hopeful of getting as close to 100 points as possible. In my experience there are sites where we get in the 90's and some where we are forced to settle for the 80's due to some practical restraint from the client or product. I personally believe at best the EMD is two of those points. So, with or without, you will be fine.

Hope it helps,

[Guest]

This post is deleted!

[RobertFisher]

What I've read is EMD's don't have the impact they once had but have an impact. My question is since I'm a believer in an EMD what if an EMD is available?

In my opinion, I still see value in them. The issue becomes if it is one broad(er) search term and you can get it, OK. Just don't put too much time and energy into that. I can promise that if you dont have it and do great SEO, you will still do well.

There are even some that say a .us or biz extension will do. I've read that us and biz extensions take longer to rank. But in regards to my question about hyphenated EMD's.... Is a hyphenated EMD the next best thing to an EMD?

I met "some" and was not impressed with his data - whether verbal or written. (It is typically anecdotal). I do not like .us or .biz, but I will tell you it is a personal bias. The bias is drawn from a belief that some might see those as having less authority in some way and therefore they might impact CTR. As to the "next best thing to": No, the EMD is the next best thing to the hyphenated.

Yes, Google really does see both the same from the vantage of what is there. Obviously, if it saw both the same exactly, that would be a problem.

The beauty of the SEO community as a whole and especially of this one is that you have a collective that believes you must test and learn continuously. Since I originally come from the medical field, I value that scientific approach very highly. Even better, we are willing to say what is opinion and what the data says. An example is this: I have given you a link to learn SEO from moz re domains. When you go to this you will find that here on moz it says: Avoid hyphens. Hyphens detract from credibility and can act as a spam indicator.

Well, I totally disagree. I would like to see the prove up for both: What is the prove up for hyphens detracting from credibility? acting as a spam indicator? Who/what is it indicating "spam" to? To me, I do not see it. I have many here on moz of whom I respect highly and value their opinions on SEO/SEM/analytics, etc. who disagree with me.

Yet, in that same link it says that one should avoid: .info, .us, etc. To a greater or lesser degree I agree but for a different reason. I don't like .us, .co, .biz, etc. but I use .info on a semi occasional basis.

I have a specific legal practice (highly competitive) in a large US city that we use a hyphenated .info domain name that is greater than 15 characters (its 25). When we took over the account in late August 2011 they did not rank on page 5 for anything. We did the following: rebuilt site with new domain and 301'd all. Then, we did real SEO to include: brutal on page, Local, amazing content, great meta descriptions that speak to the query, phenomenal coding, author schema... and we force the site owner to produce content or pay us to produce content by showing him the results from that. Soo, we outrank same domain name no hyphen .com, .net, .whatever in 5 of 7 important categories. Stay with me, this is going to get even better:

Another tool I am providing prior to my final point on this in hopes of helping you out of the jam you are in is this: The Google SEO Starter Guide and a question. Go through it and show us where Google is discounting spammy hyphenated domain names. By the time you are through with it, you will learned a lot of valuable SEO tools and the answer will not matter.

Lastly, here is the real issue you must address: Of all the things in SEO that need to be focused on, on a scale of 1 to 10 in value to the site, you are worrying over a 2 at best when the one further up are more important. From working with clients and being willing to accept some of my failings, I have learned we all first seek the easy answer. Unfortunately, in pursuit of the easy answer we often miss the right one.

I hope this helps you or anyone engaged in this wonderful quest we work in,

Robert