[sparkplug]

I'm interested in getting other people's opinion on EMD's.  For example, if uglybluedog.com is not available, will ugly-blue-dog.com be just as good?

[MarkAse]

If memory serves based on prior testing: It's close, but not quite as good.

[travman]

supposedly Google ignores hyphens, and they count as spaces or something. But you cannot brand a site with hyphens because
you will lose type in traffic since people will type in the unhyphenated version (theoretically)

[clickbumped]

Both work, except emd seems to "stick" faster than e-m-d. In my experience, I can rank an EMD nearly twice as fast as an E-M-D. It's weird, but it works the same every time.

To be honest, I'm starting to care less and less about EMDs and just finding older, more authoritative domains with some relation to the topic of interest to use. I think that EMDs are losing their punch anyways, and eventually won't count any more than anything else.

[mofoe]

Was chatting to trakker about this the other day, he thnks they working less now. I think from a quality perspective EMD's are often crap, like top 10 hostings or something, they are often one page biast sites.

[makeakilling]

I'm strongly convinced EMDs have tiny to no SEO effect, so if you can't get an exact match, forget about it, grab what you can and focus on link building  - high rankings will follow.

If you're choosing a domain name for a serious website (I mean no micro blog for adsense or similar), here are several things for you to consider:
1. Go after a brand or a semi-brand. By brand I don't mean some registered trademark, I'm talking about creating your own brand. For example, the main keyword you target is "ugly blue dog". Rather than choosing "uglybluedog.com" or "ugly-blue-dog.com", choose "doxie.com" or "uglydoxie.com". You website will rank not because your keyword is in the domain name, but because your content is relevant and you build great links consistently. Moreover, people tend to remember brand names better than keyword phrases.

2. Look for a ".com", especially for serious / money-making projects. Again, search engines don't care what you have in your domain name - same is true about the extension, be it ".info", ".biz" or whatever - SEOs have no problems ranking these websites. I advise ".com" (brand + com) because of the visitors - people tend to trust coms more, the rest, especially infos, are often perceived as spam.

3. Hyphens are not the best solution, especially if you have a competitor with a similar name without hyphens. Imagine, there is a popular website uglybluedog.com, and you create your website ugly-blue-dog.com. There's a risk of loosing your traffic simply because people will forget the hyphens, typing in your competitor's url.

Edited by makeakilling, 16 February 2012 - 03:28.

[krish]

I had several EMD sites ranking on page 1 with very few backlinks built regularly. But in the recent past these EMDs have dropped in rankings. There are sites with inner pages outranking my sites. So clearly EMD advantage is diminishing fast.

[sparkplug]

It sounds like the power of the EMD's are diminishing. I did see one site in the niche I am thinking about entering. They modified the EMD slightly.
Instead of uglybluedog.com., they added a "x" on the end, so the domain shows as uglybluedogx.com
This site is sitting at the #1 spot on page one. And it is in there with some stiff competition and some really high $$$ adsense. The site is less than a year old.
Maybe adding a letter to the end of a EMD, like a "z" to make uglybluedogz.com sound plural could pass a little juice. But, if the strength of EMD's are truly going by the wayside, it really would not matter. Thanks everyone for all the great input.

[Fitgal]

sparkplug, on 16 February 2012 - 07:39, said:

It sounds like the power of the EMD's are diminishing. I did see one site in the niche I am thinking about entering. They modified the EMD slightly.
Instead of uglybluedog.com., they added a "x" on the end, so the domain shows as uglybluedogx.com
This site is sitting at the #1 spot on page one. And it is in there with some stiff competition and some really high $$$ adsense. The site is less than a year old.
Maybe adding a letter to the end of a EMD, like a "z" to make uglybluedogz.com sound plural could pass a little juice. But, if the strength of EMD's are truly going by the wayside, it really would not matter. Thanks everyone for all the great input.

If you can't get the EMD instead of adding a letter which means nothing, why not add another word that can give it more value.

For example, lets say you want uglybluedog dot com and could not get it. Why not go for uglybluedogproducts dot com or uglybluedogreviews dot com.

Then you gain the possibility of ranking for bluedogproducts and bluedogreviews in addition to uglybluedog.

I also feel that would gain more trust with a visitor than a random x added to the end.

If you are going to add something to the end, why not use it to your advantage.

[travman]

Fitgal, on 16 February 2012 - 20:39, said:

If you can't get the EMD instead of adding a letter which means nothing, why not add another word that can give it more value.

For example, lets say you want uglybluedog dot com and could not get it. Why not go for uglybluedogproducts dot com or uglybluedogreviews dot com.

Then you gain the possibility of ranking for bluedogproducts and bluedogreviews in addition to uglybluedog.

I also feel that would gain more trust with a visitor than a random x added to the end.

If you are going to add something to the end, why not use it to your advantage.

good advice

[sparkplug]

Fitgal, on 16 February 2012 - 20:39, said:

If you can't get the EMD instead of adding a letter which means nothing, why not add another word that can give it more value.

For example, lets say you want uglybluedog dot com and could not get it. Why not go for uglybluedogproducts dot com or uglybluedogreviews dot com.

Then you gain the possibility of ranking for bluedogproducts and bluedogreviews in addition to uglybluedog.

I also feel that would gain more trust with a visitor than a random x added to the end.

If you are going to add something to the end, why not use it to your advantage.

Good Advice, Indeed. Thanks...