There is a direct search engine optimization benefit to using keyword rich hyphenated domain names (and directory/filenames). Google and other search engines using Googles database (AOL, Netscape etc…) will give every page of a site a fair boost for singular and hyphenated words within the domain name, even when the word isn’t used in the code. Yahoo and MSN also give a SERPs boost, but it’s much smaller than seen with Google. For example one of our consultants has a home page with their ISP. The URL is http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/ This URL parses to “http homepage ntlworld com ooar123 search engine optimization” with the last three being important keywords. The ‘words’ homepage, ntlworld and ooar123 are not keywords important to the content and so they are not used in the content of any of the pages of the site. A search for various combinations does show that even though those words are not used in the content, just being part of the URL (domain name) is enough for Google to find those pages.

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Rohit Mehra

Anchor Text Revisited

When a web master links to Seotutorials they will tend to use the following code- <a href=”http://rohitseo.wordpress.com”>SEO Gold</a> (using the business name as anchor text) or <a href=”http://www.seo-gold.com”>seo tutorials</a> (using the URL as anchor text) In both cases the site benefits from the keywords Google can parse from the anchor text. The first example we have SEO tutorials (one important keyword out of two words). In the second example www SEO Gold com (one important keyword out of four words, not as good, but better than nothing). So in both cases we benefit just by choosing the right business and domain name. If we’d of gone with the words combined (http://rohitseo.wordpress.com) version, Google wouldn’t parse out anything helpful, it would see www seogold com which is unhelpful since no one will search for seogold! Webmasters who use the business name might use Seogold as anchor text instead of the preferred SEO Gold as well! The above also holds true for directory and filenames, so when choosing directory and filenames use hyphens like you see for the pages of this site. For example the page you are reading has the URL- http://rohitseo.wordpress.comThis will be parsed to- http www seo gold com tutorial domain name choice html if a webmaster linked to this page using the entire URL! From this we have important keywords “SEO Tutorial Domain Name Choice”. Please note underscores (_) within a filename or directory like domain_name_choice are not treated as word separators like hyphens are in domain-name-choice, so rather than parsing to “domain name choice” Google see one word “domain_name_choice”. Try the search in Google for domain_name_choice to see the problem.

keep hardworking 

Thanx for visiting!

Rohit Mehra

Why http://rohitseo.wordpress.com if (hyphenated) and not http://rohitseo.wordpress.com (non-hyphenated)? The current main search engine doesn’t recognize the individual words from the above non-hyphenated domain names, so they would not help future optimization plans. The hyphenated domain http://rohitseo.wordpress.com is seen by Google as- http://rohitseo.wordpress.com since Google treats . (dots) and – (hyphens) as a space. We say “google can parse those keywords out of the domain name”. Note a domain with a single keyword (i.e www.keyword.tld) will have the single keyword recognized since Google sees the two dots (in the example above) as spaces (sees www keyword tld). So when choosing a domain name either go with a single keyword domain or have multiple (or at least one) keyword(s) separated by hyphens.

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Rohit Mehra