All great stuff here folks, I REALLY appreciate the feed back of this caliber, and with next to no squabbling between contributors as one would find at many other forums, but mostly true to subject helpful input as it applies to the initial query, backed by some YEARS of experience and references of legitimate resources such as Matt Cutts, who BTW, seems less likely to respond to such queries on Google’s groups forums LOL!
In fact it was the lack of attention to my posts there which drove me to find you guys, along with a couple other really good forum based resources!
3 or hyphens are bad, as previously many spammers have registered such domain names. Search engines may consider such site as spammy website if the domain is registered for only 1-2 years.
Actually, its not bad. its just have a little disadvantage.
Put yourself in user’s position. As you can see, its much easier to remember a URL without a hyphen rather than a URL with a hyphen, isn’t?
Well I have to thank you all for this insight, and yes I realize this has become a rather old post, and I apologize for not keeping up with it, but as everyone knows, “life” happens. LOL!
I absolutely loved the super bowl example, which could not be more valid, since the indexing process, where relevancy is concerned, could reflect poorly without the means to discern the difference, especially where back links are concerned, the more relevant a site linked to a similar site, the more weight it will carry for those phrases, so with out division of those words, it could possibly be categorized very low for the wrong interpretation, where as making the split in the domain name, will then only be comparing relevance to the intended topics, and key word phrases, as for the argument between user friendliness, which to me is equally as important if not a slightly higher priority, I really do not feel “memory” comes in to play here, nor does the number of words to it, unless you are using external branding types of marketing, ie…post card mailers, newspaper ads, and other printed media, because people on the Internet in general, are instant gratification junkies, and they want everything yesterday, and with out typing, or scrolling, and when confronted with a daunting domain name, or exceptionally long pages, they will opt to continue looking for an easier resource for whatever they are looking for.
With that said, most of these types of searchers, once clicking through to a site, regardless of its domain name, will bookmark it, especially if you put a bookmark link script in their faces as soon as they arrive on the site, maybe in the lowest part of the header, so it will cascade through out all the pages, making return visits no more effort than any other sites they currently visit regularly.
My interpretation of Gringo’s search results tells me that the reason he got much higher results with the hyphenated domain names, as opposed to the run-on domain name, is because the search returned additional results for each separated word, along with the possibly more desirable combination of those words as a search term, and also would have returned more results less relevant since those words are not exclusive to his intended audience, and could also be used in numerous contexts, which to me, would in fact reduce his chances of showing higher in the SERP’s because the more total results a search term returns in a search, the more competition he will have for those search terms, so in an instance like this, shooting for the results with the lowest returns, will be a better target to come in higher in the SERP’s, and gain top positions much quicker, albeit for less desirable keyword phrases, but isn’t it better to be a BIG fish in a smaller pond than the little fish in the huge pond?
Especially since most real-estate sites have local markets and by defining their distribution as being local, they eliminate most of the total region’s results, competing for the same positions, for the same key words, thereby gaining the prestigious 2-5 SERP positions, on the first page, and this is how
I tend to SEO my sites with very impressive results, for a few highly competitive markets, in this manner. So when there is allot of competition for a particular audience, shooting for the niche markets within the mainstream will get you better positions when the terms are cross relevant with other markets appealing to the same audiences, significantly reducing the originally extremely high competition to a much broader cross section since it is unlikely you will need to rank high in serps for out of state or country for that matter, results that are unlikely to use your services because it would only be useful to them if they were moving across the country or just a state or two away, their searches will still be something like this…
3 bedroom homes in Tacoma Washington, or house for sale in orange county CA, …point is, anyone looking to buy real-estate, will include regional descriptors in their searches, so by reducing the total number of results returned through a regional localization tag, you filter out for your visitors, the million other usless returns from around the country, and need only to look through those in the specific area they intend to move to.
This would also apply to websites for landscapers for instance, its unlikely any landscaper will service customers too far from their home base, so by setting a regional locale tag, their site will then rank significantly higher despite the enormous competition in this market, and then need only compete with other local sites, and even there many will not be returned in those results because they are not specifying any region or locale, making them less relevant for the search term that includes a regional locality, despite those others being based in the same region but are not discriminating what their audience should consist of!
Thank you all for enlightening me with your responses, I hope the techniques I use for SEO on some of my client specific sites is a help to others, the tag usage is as follows …
<meta name="distribution" content="local" />
and combined with this tag
<meta name="classification" content="your type of services, in your county, and your state, including your zip code(s)" />
Keeping in mind two of these sites I utilized this on, which were well over a year old, if not two or more, never showed up on the SERPS before becoming too tired to keep going to the next page to find their sites listed, to taking over the top five places, with the majority in the 1st and 2nd positions with in just a few weeks of these changes, along with a few other changes to the search terms, to get more of them in those higher places, with NO content changes done to the site through out that whole period.
As for the more niche markets, that may be considered somewhat obscure, I have gotten brand new sites to fall in to the top three positions within weeks for most of their primary keywords, yes I said weeks, using basic SEO techniques available to all on the web. Beleive me I was shocked when joining Google groups for some insight and reading posts where people’s complaints about how long their new sites being 7 plus months old, and have yet to have had even their index page crawled and get a “URL Not Found” error when searching their domain name as well.
So it CAN be done, if you think carefully about how you are doing things, to ensure ALL applicable metrics are utilized throughout the site.
Thanks again all, I hope I am giving something back sharing my experiences here, in exchange for much of the help I have gotten from here.
since the indexing process, where relevancy is concerned, could reflect poorly without the means to discern the difference, especially where back links are concerned, the more relevant a site linked to a similar site, the more weight it will carry for those phrases, so with out division of those words, it could possibly be categorized very low for the wrong interpretation, where as making the split in the domain name, will then only be comparing relevance to the intended topics, and key word phrases…
I’m not sure search engines know the difference, but humans certainly do : )