Google’s John Mueller recently confirmed that using hyphenated domain names are okay for SEO. Hyphenated domain names, long shunned in the SEO community as spammy, are apparently confirmed to not have any kind of negative signal attached to it.
Hyphenated Domain Names And SEO
Hyphenated-domain-names were a big deal in the early days of SEO because search engines initially used primitive keyword-based algorithms for ranking web pages. Hyphenated keyword domain names were fairly common and they routinely ranked well. This was over 25 years ago when SEOs put the keyword phrase in the title, meta description, H1, at the top of the page then use successive H2 headings to put variations of the keyword phrase, plus add them to the content with bolding applied, and in outbound links to internal pages as well as to a relevant .edu and .gov web page. Those were the days, right?
Hyphenated domain names were also highly popular for backlinks to personal injury sites as late as 2006 because the SEOs of the day believed that keywords in the domain named helped pages be relevant. As I understand it, SEOs rented packages of those hyphenated domain names for thousands of dollars per month.
An Archive.org cache of the open source DMOZ directory for California personal injury law firms showed that about 16% of the listings on that page used hyphenated domain names. What makes this notable is that DMOZ listings were tightly scrutinized by editors so that generally only the best of the best were listed there. That nearly 20% of personal injury firms listed in that category were hyphenated attests to the power of the hyphenated domain names at that time.
Screenshot Of September 2000 DMOZ Personal Injury Directory
Google Says Hyphenated Domains Are Okay
Google’s John Mueller responded to a post on Bluesky that was about the upper limit of hyphens that can be used in a domain name.
John Mueller responded here:
“Occasionally we get questions about whether dashes in domain names are ok for SEO (they’re ok).
So far, I haven’t seen anyone ask the other question – HOW MANY DASHES ARE OK?
Folks, the answer is apparently 61.”
Are Hyphenated Domains Inherently Spammy?
In the SEO community, the common understanding about hyphenated domain names is that they’re spammy. At some point those domain names stopped ranking in Google and SEOs stopped using them. But the fact that they stopped working may have been more about the quality of the sites that used them and less about the hyphenated domains.
But back in the day, hyphenated domain names contributed to ranking well and worked great for encouraging users to click through from the search results to the domain name. The fact is that keywords in a domain name quickly telegraphs to a potential site visitor that the domain name is relevant to the person making the query.
Big Brand Sites Use Hyphenated Domain Names
The truth about hyphenated domains is that many legitimate big brand sites use them and rank well…
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