domain name

[lemon]

Chris

In your opinion, for Google .. which domain fares better?

lemonjuicemaker.com

or

lemon-juice-maker.com

if my target kw is "lemon juice"

I can't use lemon-juice.com or lemonjuice.com since they are registered.

[incka]

I always wondered why you were called Lemon


I think they would be quite equal, because googles technologoy will easily divide the words up, but Chris should have a more accurate answer.

[chromate]

lemon-juice-maker.com would be better in terms of google.

[Chris]

Actually Google can't divide words up, which makes the hyphenate better for SEO.

[lemon]

The url, eg. lemon-juice-maker.com, wouldn't be considered part of the anchor text right?

From my understanding in Chris' articles, the anchor text counts alot. So would lemon-juice-maker.com or lemonjuicemaker.com fare better? Why?

Assuming both using "Lemon Juice Maker" as link text.

[Chris]

Assuming you have control over the anchor text it will matter very little.

The issue comes in when people link to you using your URL as the anchor text, such as in forums or in some news articles.

For directories it still matters but very few places still use straight directory searches anymore (MSN -- and they'll be changing in the future).

[chromate]

If your anchor text is always "lemon juice maker" then I don't think the domain makes that much difference.

The problem is when people start linking to you using your domain name, and it does happen. If this happens a lot and your domain isn't hyphonated then the search engine won't put two and two together and your rank will probably take a knock because of it.

However, if you're not only depending on search engines for your traffic, and offline marketing plays a big role (offset the importance of this against potential traffic from search engines), then it may be worth getting the domain without hyphons.

Especially as your domain name would have 2 hyphons. Humans can't compute more than one hyphone, and even that they find hard

Just depends on your promotional methods.

[lemon]

Originally posted by Chris
The issue comes in when people link to you using your URL as the anchor text, such as in forums or in some news articles.

That makes sense ...

So you're saying that if people linked using anchor text:
eg. http://www.lemon-juice-maker.com/article.htm

it is better than
http://www.lemonjuicemaker.com/article.htm

since Google can pick up 'lemon' and 'juice' ... etc. instead of 'lemonjuice' which has no literal value?

[Chris]

Exactly.

[lemon]

Chris, would a hypenated domain name help in a graphical link situation?

Say if someone linked to my site, lemon-juice-maker.com, using a 88x31 button, would the hypenated keywords in my domain be considered 'anchor' text of sort?

Also would the ALT text be considered 'anchor' text by Google?

[chromate]

The alt text hardly makes any difference. Though I think some people believe it contributes, but only a very minimal amount!

Having anchor text is far superior in terms of SEO to a plain graphical link. Though you could opt for both by having a graphic button and your anchor text below it.

[Chris]

Avoid graphics if you can.

If not use fake graphics. Using CSS put a graphical background on link text. There is an article how to do it on this site.

[chromate]

I would think it would be easier to persuade a webmaster to include a simple text link to your site, rather than trying to get them to include graphics anyway.