I've recently been working on a fansite for a widely known series. I bought the domain awhile ago, which is like this: seriesname-fans.com. Recently, someone mentioned to me that the "-" might affect seo. Is that true? I'm definitely willing to dump that domain in order to maintain better seo. I'd be very grateful if someone could help me out. I'm a noob with domains. (: Thanks.

If you think that the dash would affect your search engine rankings, I really would not worry about it.

If peoples find out your site, they won't close their browser because of it, and search engines just don't care about typo.
They care about what peoples are looking for.

the "-" makes the page less valuable (from a selling perspective) and also may effect search engine results.

also may effect search engine results.

Why, or why not ?
Do you have anything to back that up ?

I only have my brain and good sense to tell me that it should not and probably do not matters.
Reselling price is something else, but search engine result placement...

I highly doubt it will affect search engine rankings. A bigger issue here might be that a user will forget to add the "-" in when they type out the domain themselves and end up going to the wrong site. E.g. rather than typing seriesname-fans.com, they forget to type the "-" so type seriesnamefans.com. That's the only issue I can really think of. Plenty of people who call themselves "SEO expert" will tell you it will affect SEO, but they often follow rumours that circulate - it's best not to listen to their advice. Build a site for visitors, not search engines.

Dan

It shouldn't affect search engines much. It will affect type in traffic and returning visitors though. Keep that in mind - your visitors might not remember the dash.

It doesn't do anything negative to your SEO efforts. As Whym said, the only issue you may encounter is when people forget to type the - in the URL. I'll admit that I typed webmastertalk.com once or twice when trying to get to this forum.

Eventually, though, your brand will prevail. But it takes some getting used to.

Alrite. (: I think i'll stick with it for now. It didn't seem to be a problem with my last site, i just wanted to make sure in advance that it wouldn't affect this site either.

It is made for the visitors, but of course i want visitors from typing in seriesname fans, and being able to reach my site.

So, thanks, all of you! XD

The dash will not affect the SEO, in fact the domain name as a whole doesn't really play a role in SEO anymore..

Google treats green-tree.com and greentree.com as the same..

The hyphen plays no role from a search engine's perspective. As someone mentioned above, the domain really does not matter with or without the hyphen. However, I remember reading an article about how users remember domains without a hyphen a lot better than those with a hyphen.. If you are looking for some direct type-in traffic, you also don't want a hyphen. Few factors, but they can prove to be immense, which is why people prefer non-hyphen domains.

^Oh, okay. That makes sense. (: I was mainly worried about the search engine problem. Anyway, thank you, everyone who posted. You've really helped out.

As many other posters already said, I'm the same opinion that the "-" doesn't affect your site's rating.

However I think that a minus sign can sometimes even increase readability of a long domain name. So fansitejohnsmith.tld is harder to read than fansite-johnsmith.tld.

If you fear that people may forget about the "-" and mistakenly come to your competitor's website, why not register both domain versions (considering that they are available) ?

I don't think it will effect seo, but I think you should still avoid hyphenated domains if possible. They are ok alternatives but if the non-hyphenated version is available then definitely grab it.

Lol, the series is "twilight". I checked twilightfans.com first, of course, but it was registered, so i settled with twilight-fans. Right now twilightfans.com is a messageboard for a similar purpose. :\

The dash issue is that the customers may visit your competitors site instead of yours. However when they find it through a search engine there is no such problem. You know they just click on a link.

The problem with using a '-' is that not all your traffic will remember to put it in. So instead of going to:
seriesname-fans.com
they will go to
seriesnamefans.com
and if someone owns that domain, they will steal your traffic.

Simple as that.

Won't kill you, but better without

Originally Posted by tripy

Why, or why not ?
Do you have anything to back that up ?

Yes ... but let's take a minute to remember that affect seo can mean a positive effect or a negative effect.

Search engines seek out links; the text in those links gets associated with page they point at. And a dash breaks up two words. So showfans is one word, while show-fans is two. Links that use the url for anchor text are going to make two words that somebody might actually use, instead of one that isn't really a word.

I have a feeling that several dashes in a domain name are looked down on by search engines, but I can't prove it ... and some-spammy-web-site-that-sells-nokia-phones.com is entirely different from show-fans.com anyway...

I've read the hyphen won't make your site any less known in the search engine. In fact it helps with parsing. If you depend on search engine traffic than you should be fine. It does become an issue for people who want people to remember their sites by name as they tend to forget to put the "-" in when they type it into the browser. There will always be opinions on both sides. I think if you make a good site, it will do good anyway!

^thanks, guys. darn, but i think i'l stick with it.
thanks for all the comments & suggestions