bicycle-cards-online or bicyclecardsonline?

I'm registering some domains and was wondering if it is better to hyphenate or not hyphenate. I don't know how Google treats hyphens.

For example, if I'm going after the phrase "bicycle cards online" would it be better to use:

bicycle-cards-online.com

or

bicyclecardsonline.com

Would Google pick up this keyword phrase if I used all absolute urls in my links, say:

http://www.bicycle-cards-online.com/page1.html
http://www.bicycle-cards-online.com/page2.html

etc?

Thanx.

Go with hyphens bicycle-cards-online.com

Google cannot parse keywords within a word, otherwise I would change my name to morganseo because it has "seo" in it

Google treats "-" as a space, as long as you dont have a rediculously long kw string go with hyphens for SEO but buy the non-hyphenated for typins and revisits most users forget the dash when they try to remember where that quality site they last visited was

Also of course, consider file names and directories as well.
there are some sites that create phrases through combinations of domain name, directory and file name like this...

www.dvd-movie-latest.com/releases/film-name.html

or

www.dvd-movie-latest.com/films/film-name.html

or
www.dvd-movie-latest.com/players/sony.html

etc.

A little thought, and you can make some pretty powerful urls together and because of the unusual domain name, you can normally get them available (e.g. www.dvd-movie-latest.com is actually available)

This kind of url phrase forming can be quite effective in the serps. Do however try to get some branding in there as well though. www.keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com kind of url does look spammy and amateur, they commonly are too.

But back to your question though, use hyphens in domain name, directory and file names (don't use the underscore '_' in file or directory names).

Hope that helps
Alan

I don't think I even own a non-hyphenated domain. Webby is dead on in his assessment that you can build some very powerful domain strings. That strategy has worked for me very well, albeit the Florida update still hasn't released my sites from GG hell (my Orlando site is still rocking though :grin:

I have been reading and learning and experimenting and reading and learning and..., and have not pinned down the url part totally yet. Is it everyone's advice to have both www.kw1-brand.com and www.kw1brand.com pointing to your website? If so, does this cause any of those duplication penalties with search engines? And will both or just one address show up in serps or can you set it up to only rank one address?

Thanks

mktman:-D

I am a magician, How much are your cards???

Point both but only advertise one. use kw1-brand.com for SEO (backlinks, directory submissions, etc,) and use kw1brand.com for emails, sales confirmations and business cards.

You should be fine aslong as you dont interlink the domain names or develop too many backlinks to kw1brand.com.

-PK

Google likes a hyphen domain name that contains content related to the keywords in the domain name. If your site is about playing cards then register one domain name that contains "playing cards" avoid a different domain name for any online marketing. The only reason why you would like the domain without the hyphens is to point it to the one with hyphens. Market and sell one domain name (the one with the hyphens) and do not even mention the one without hyphens anywhere.

For neatness, presentations and professionalizm you can use the un-hyphenated one for business cards, coupons, flyers, etc, if your business uses these forms of advertisments.

-PK

Good advice as always pk. I have www.brand.ca right now and it is in the serps and in directories under that address. Is it too late to do a www.brand-marketing.com? Is it something you have to do from the start or not at all?

mktman27,
You can 301 redirect (not META) brand.ca to brand-marketing.com. This will take a month or so for the site to redirect. Start establishing backlinks to brand-marketing.com and you should be ok.

If you are getting good traffic and have good serps than it might not be worth it to start from scratch but if you really needed to that would be your best bet.

-PK

I did the same for 2 of my clients domains and it worked pretty well !!

PK

Do not forget about branding. That is why I say stick to the hyphenated address. Register the non-hyphenated address and thereafter full steam market and sell the hyphen address. You do not want people to link to your other address after reading a add in the newspaper do you!

Ahhhh, how true rojo.

Branding is worth more than the average doorway domain spammer appreciates.

The ideal domain name, in my opinion, is
brandname-keyword-keyword.com.

Gotta get that brandname in folks, otherwise that link in the Google SERPS looks like, and most commonly is, doorway domain spam. 0 content and a bunch of affiliate links.
Joe Surfer really sees that now, so you need branding and you need uniqueness (easier said than done admittedly.)

What works, in my experience, is a domain name with a brand name + keyword(s), it has a unique feature/tool/article/content. It has a community that is well administered/ It has an SEO savvy webmaster.

You get that lot together, no matter what branch/theme you are in, and within a year you can feed the baby big time :-)