Nasir A Jafri

Domain Name Suggestions

Posted By Nasir Abbas Jafri ~ 2nd November 2008

Everybody has a question that which is better for domain name and/or url: hyphen (-), underscore(_), or plus sign(+)?

Hyphens and underscores are the best keyword delimiter you can use in your domain name or URL. They are seen as equal by all of the major search engines.

Some expert says that separators are not necessary as search engines can find keywords in URLs without assistance. They are smart and most likely can pick some keywords out of a URL. But they are not that smart. Sometimes it is not obvious where one keyword ends and another begins. For example: expertsexchange.com can be seen as “experts exchange” and “expert sex change”. These are obviously two very different topics. In this case a hyphen or underscore would clearly separate the keywords and solve this problem.

Related posts:

1. Will too many hyphens in your domain name cause the search engines to label your site as spam This is a myth caused by many spam sites using multiple hyphens in their domain name. Many people have wrongly concluded that only spam sites would need to use more...