Ive got an idea for a domain (which I cannot reveal as its uber secret!) and seeing as though the main domains have gone for all the usual .com / .co.uk / .net / . org / .org.uk etc, the 1 domain that hasnt gone is all the afore mentioned BUT, I have to concatenate 2 keywords together with “and” as the joining word - Is this good practise for starters ? Does “and” act as a “stop” word for search engines even in domain names ?
An example of what Im trying to do: (This is not the one Im using!)
normally and serves no special purpose but could be helpfull in getting better search results but i would rather suggest to use “-” to concatenate words
I strongly advise against either “and” or “-” in domain names. We’ve registered over 500 domain names in the ~4 years we’ve been doing stuff online, and pretty much 100% of the successful sites shared the following traits:
they were .com, .net, .org, or .me
they had no “-”, no “and”, no “the”, and none other stuff that people tend to forget or ignore after a while
they had no numbers
they consisted of less than 4 words
if you cant come up with anything that fulfills those requirements thats still free, try something like Dotomatic or other Web 2.0 name generators. they often give you a hint to a nice suffix which fits the niche and allows you to use your 1-2 main keywords without any additional junk.
Domains with keywords that are concatenated kinda look unprofessional but there’s nothing wrong with them and google does not have reservations for such sites.As long as the major keywords are included in the domain.
As a local group with a long name (effectively “Here and There Social Club”), we spent a long time discussing possible domains before registering one, and finally settled on using hyphens for readability i.e. here-there-social-club.co.uk. Great - until you need to tell that address, or an associated e-mail address, to someone, and you have to spell out “here hyphen there hyphen…”
Definitely not the way to do it!
(No problem with search engines, though, as there’s nobody else with a similar name.)
If your only concern is “SEO Friendly URL” then I see no problem. If most of your target audience is going to find you through google or any other search engines then you should go for either “and” or “-”.
But in case you are are a brand, make it sure the the domain does not affect the brand image.
The best domain name should reflects name of your business. Using “and” in domain name some times leads to misspell. Its better to have domain names in short which are easily rememberable. Otherwise you can choose any other related phrase.
And you should never reveal it because if it is good someone will just register it before you do.
It has to make sense, sound right, and be easy to remember, and preferably be as short as possible. Using the word “and” works for something like “BreadAndButter” because that’s how people actually talk. Something like “DrinksAndDancing” would be fine, and I think is better than “drinks-dancing” as far as being a memorable domain name.
You don’t have to necessarily include the words in your domain name that you are about. What is a “face book” anyway? Most people have never spoken like that before facebook.com came along.
It seems to me that the sites that use hypens in the domain name tend to be spammy and unprofessional. And as someone mentioned, telling someone your domain name becomes a hassle. “Bread dash butter dot com” does not roll off the tongue as easily as “bread and butter dot com” and will be harder for people to remember.
Hi,
It is a good idea to get a domain name that matches your requirement as long as it complies with the rules for domain naming. May be a company come up later to you alleging that you copied them.
If you are looking for naming your domains this way for SEO enhancement, then It wont effect it any way but the content and the quality of the site will.
i would like to suggest that instead of going with SE Friendly domain, make selection for brand name. Branding will be useful in future and it makes corporate impression. And From SEO point of view, if you do continue SEO with dedicated seo executive, your brand will be famous on your targeted keywords. So be a brand not a keyword.
generic words like and, to, the, and so on, get usually skipped by search engines, so it should not really matter. In fact it’s a good way to get a good domain, if the one without “and” is already taken.
I agree with “mongooz” that using “-” instead of “and” is better from search engine point of view. Domain name should be unique, attractive and easy to remember and it is good to have your targeted keyword in the domain name, which makes its SEO easy. All the rest in the search engine rankings depend on the optimization you do for the website.
If you’re focused on brand building (i.e. 22 Immutable Laws of Branding – a must read book), I’d avoid using the word “and” unless you’re doing a purely SEO play
As far as I know, and is considered to be a stop word by search engines, so they would probably disregard it completely and focus on the other words within the domain name.
I think it would depend totally on your personal preference really. There is nothing wrong in using it. There won’t be any problems in seo if you use it.
However, if you ask me personally, I would not use it in any of my domains out of personal choice.
