Do you know how hyphen in domain name affect the SEO? The initial step in search engine optimization before website design and development is the selection of the business name and the name of the website. How to write the name to rank on Google? No doubt, keywords,  hyphen in domain name, and spaces in the domain name have heavy weight. Domain names consist of three main parts:

• Subdomain
• Domain name
• Top-level domain

For example,  www.virtuenetz.pk and Virtuenetz.com

Here, the www sub-domain, “virtuenetz” is the domain name whereas .pk is the top-level domain. Here the main issue to be discussed is domain name. How to write it? With spaces or with hyphens? Writing hyphen in domain name is considered to be a good practice, it does not directly affect SEO or Google ranking anyway. However, using spaces is not recommended or allowed in Google as Google does not detect or read spaces between words in domain names.

Using Hyphen in Domain Name Hurt SEO?

Hyphens are easily readable by web crawlers, so it does not affect SEO at all. It’s best practice to hyphenate your URLs because they are much easier to read and localize domain names.

There are three examples:

1. www.virtuenetz.com
2.  https://indusrobe.com/

From the above examples, which is more readable and easy to understand? Both are readable but hyphen in domain name can increase the readability of both domains. Sometimes you need hyphens. Hyphens are blessings. Use them when necessary. So, use what you need to keep the name clear.

Free Domain Name Suggestions: is it ok to use hyphen in domain name?

Are Hyphen in Domain Name Good or Bad?

Hyphen in domain name good or bad? From an SEO perspective, hyphens do not directly affect your SEO or any Google ranking of your site. However, it may have some secondary issues:

• Hyphens may reduce the trustworthiness
• Hyphens may decrease the memorability

A decrease in memorability means there will be fewer visitors on your site and will feel a difficulty in memorizing hyphens in your domain name. Hyphens are difficult to keep in mind even while talking to another person. There are pros and as well as cons of using hyphenated practice in your domain name. Now you are clear about hyphen in domain name good or bad. If you are still confused you can directly contact with VirtueNetz digital marketing experts and enjoy free consultancy.

Advantages of Using Hyphen in Domain Name

1. Serves as a search engine separation
2. Makes domain names easier to read
3. Domain names are localized

Serves as a search engine separation:

Google has clarified that Google treats hyphen in domain name as separators in search engines. This means Google takes hyphenated domain names as complete compound statements rather than a single word. This avoids the possibility of search engines interpreting the domain name incorrectly. Because search engine bots are sometimes erratic, compound domain names can accidentally divide at an unexpected location.

For example in some cases, as we already have mentioned above, some domain names need to be hyphenated. The Super Bowl name needs to be hyphenated to get a clear meaning of this name. By placing the hyphen in domain name, you’ll be pointing out the actual meanings to search engines.

Makes domain name easier to read:

Using hyphen in domain name makes it easier to read. It increases its readability and understanding to the visitor. It makes the domain name unambiguous to the viewer. But, make. sure not to use 3 or more hyphen in domain name as this will correlate your domain name with spammy behavior which will affect your ranking in search ranking.

Domain names are localized:

The effectiveness of hyphen in domain name for localizing brand and domain names is another benefit you’ll enjoy. For example, if your company is growing and you want to launch a localized domain for a new city or country, you can use hyphens. Therefore, studbud-pk.com might be the localized domain for studbud.com in Pakistan.

Disadvantages of Using Hyphens in Domain Names

• Difficult to memorize
• Destroyed reliability

Difficult to memorize

Using hyphens and numbers in the domain name makes it more complex and unreadable for the audience. The use of hyphens and numbers may increase in characters, making it longer and harder to remember. Audiences or visitors may find difficulty in remembering the hyphens between words. This creates a hassle when someone wants to share your domain name verbally or in print. This leads to confusion. If a person misses the hyphens of your domain name or types the same domain name but without hyphens, he may visit the other website mistakenly due to your hyphen in domain name.

Destroys reliability

According to a study on the effects of hyphen in domain name, web visitors prefer to interact with non-hyphenated websites. Internet consumers are increasingly associating domain names containing hyphens with spam, making them appear less reliable than their counterparts. Thus, your credibility with online consumers could be ruined if you don’t adhere to recommended practices for hyphen in domain name. You might also end up getting blacklisted by the bots.

Are domain names important to SEO?

Although your domain name isn’t often thought of as a direct Google ranking criterion, certain aspects of it might influence your overall SEO success. These consist of components including length, brand-ability, keyword utilization, memorability, and more.

SEO Expert’s suggestions about domain name

Conclusion: Is Hyphen in Domain Name Good or Bad?

Is hyphen in domain name good or bad? Now that we have already come to know about readability, reliability, memorizing, and other important aspects, we know that using hyphens in domain names is something of a mixed bag.

Hyphens will elongate your domain name and will be difficult to memorize by visitors. It also destroys the credibility and reliability of your domain name. Poor use of hyphens may also flag you as a spammer.

On the other hand, using hyphens may increase the readability and serve as a search engine separator to localize the domain name. So, in actuality, the use of hyphens in domain names is a doubtful advantage to have.