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Does having a hyphen affect ranking?
Using hyphens may negatively affect your brand’s credibility and authority as it may pass as a spam link. Authenticity and authority are important points for Google when ranking webpages and sites. If your domain risks your brand being seen as spammy, then it could see your site’s rank decrease significantly.
Is it bad to use a hyphen in a domain name?
Avoid hyphens if possible If your domain name is two words (like www.examplesite.com), you may want to separate the words with a hyphen for readability: www.example-site.com. But, keep in mind that use of hyphens also strongly correlates with spammy behavior and decreases domain name readability and memorability.
Can you have a hyphen in a website address?
The important thing to know is that: Hyphens are allowed in domain names themselves, as well as subdomains and subfolders. Underscores are not allowed in domain names, but are allowed in subfolders. You can often see URLs like www.example.com/sub_folder/ that work just fine.
Do Top Level domains matter?
In other words, .com domains do not rank higher in search due to their TLD. However, they might indirectly rank higher due to Google’s preference for aged brands. However, if you’re buying a new domain name, the TLD you choose will not affect your search rank.
Which is better for SEO hyphens or underscores?
You have the ability to structure your URLs in a number of ways, but always remember this: your decision will have a big impact on your search engine rankings. From an SEO perspective, it is always best to use hyphens rather than underscores.
Is it against the law to use hyphen in url?
If there’s no ruling explicitly stating “don’t use hyphens in your URL”, it’s not going to be against the rules, so it’s fine to use. In this case, the closest resource we have is the former head of Google’s webspam team, Matt Cutts.
What happens when you miss a hyphen in a domain name?
The recipient is highly likely to forget to use the hyphens when entering your domain name. They reflect a brand as incompetent. If a user misses even a single hyphen when typing your brand name, they are highly likely to end up on your competitor’s site or web page. Putting the two schools to the test: do hyphens impact SEO?
Why are hyphens and dashes important in a website?
Historically, search engines couldn’t even parse punctuation. Google’s ability to parse the underscore and the dash, along with a couple of other punctuation marks, made it invaluable for programmers and other nerds looking for specific terminology that used them.