To Dash, or Not to Dash – The Unspeakable Truth About Domain Names

“Internet Marketing” books often recommend using dashes in your domain names to break up words for higher search engine impact. Consequently, I have clients all the time who have been sucked in by this advice, who cannot understand why I tell them to forget it.

Those internet marketers don’t know diddly about running a real business. They only know how to scam people online, so they don’t give a rip about average domain name issues. And what they miss is absolutely critical!

For a real business, you need a name that is speakable. If you are going to tell people the name of your website, either over the phone, in person, or on the radio, you need a name that they can hear, and remember.

That means no dashes.

A fairly sizable ISP in our area has a URL with a dash. So not only do their telephone personnel complain about people not getting it over the phone, but every single client of theirs with an email address through them has the dash problem – they know it is twice as hard to convey that email address over the phone or other times when they have to share it verbally.

Dashes are dashed awkward to say and have them be comprehensible. Not only that, but search engines really don’t care whether dashes are there or not! They are capable of recognizing words even with no dashes. That isn’t theory, no matter what you hear elsewhere, we’ve proven it.

A domain name that has a keyword or two in it is a plus – not enough of a plus to go through convoluted efforts to get it, but worth getting if you can create a graceful one that contains a keyword. But more than that, make it speakable, and memorable.

That will make more of a difference to your business success than dashed keywords ever could.