We were thinking about EMDs the other day. We know that Google prefers hyphens after the TLD, but what about before the TLD? We test if Google’s preference for hyphens also applies for TLDs.
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This is a test that I put together. We know that hyphens work better as a the TLD. So .com/3partkeyword-with-hyphens is going to be better than having that three-word phrase and squishing them all together. What about on the EMD site do things? Would an EMD that has hyphens in between a keyword phrase be better or as you normally see them, all squished together.
It really does not take long to find opinions on this so a quick search and there was a fun thing on Sitepoint, their forum on February 2010, so almost 9 years ago now, if this is a good thing and what should be done. Because we are pitting two things against each other, just two domains – the one squished together and the one with hyphens, it is not the best test environment because you could launch two pages and they can randomly show up one way or another.
What we did to get past that is to run the test multiple times. One is with a set of three, see what we’ve got, rerun and see if a pattern starts to develop as to how these things are shaking out. What was pretty awesome is, each time, doing the search, the domain with the hyphen won every time. EMD with the hyphen one, in three straight sets.
What was also interesting as is highlighted here, these sites were all picked up by the ipaddress.com type of stuff so the sites that just grabs all of the domains that are ever purchased and keep records of those. All of those third party sites, so this is setting up a subdomain with the domain, the other one right here – the parked domain from Godaddy – is showing just the domain name. All of the third party sites also win with the hyphenated domain name. It was pretty crazy. So, across the board, the hyphenated domains win each time.
I think that the direct application here is for those who are doing affiliate work. If you are doing an affiliate site and you are looking to buy the EMD or something close to it, I would look at putting hyphens in between the keyword phrase that you are looking to go after for that particular affiliate sites. With brands or with regular sites, that is often a little more tricky because it doesn’t look very brand nice if you will, but affiliate sites seem to be a very good opportunity.