Which is better, a hyphenated .com or a no hyphen .co.uk

[gazraa]

I have a few domain names for a blog/site I am working on for learning photography.

One domain which I use at the moment is www.photography-basics.com but I also have www.photographybasics.co.uk which is currently parked onto the .com

Which would be the best to use at the main domain and why?

Or doesn't it matter?

 

[accelerator]

If you want to target UK traffic, better to use .co.uk on UK server.

Re the .com, I wouldn't use dash separated if I don't own the non-separated.

If you want to target US / international, then .com on a US server.

There may be some SEO benefit to having a dash separated as the words can be read but I'm not up with the very latest algorithms.

Rgds

Accelerator

 

[BFTUK]

There may be some SEO benefit to having a dash separated as the words can be read but I'm not up with the very latest algorithms.

Hyphen seperated domains make little / no difference in the search engines these days.

I also feel domains without the hyphen are easier for type-in traffic once you develop a loyal following of users...

 

[gazraa]

The site is on a US server, but the content is for all as photography is the same where ever you are.

I did try and get the .com without hyphens but my emails to the owner (the owner on whois anyway) didn't get anywhere.

So there isn't really a great deal to choose between them for overall performance in SEO, type in and word of mouth?

 

[nnh]

PhotographyBasics.co.uk

I would go for PhotographyBasics.co.uk but you will have to keep it just a UK site unless you can aquire the .com Have you tried here?
http://www.domainsystems.com/bidform.php?domain=photographybasics.com

Forget the typhens, to difficult for users, I even got confused by your post and went to PhotographyBasics.com!!

Or choose another name :-(

Good luck...

 

[gazraa]

why does a .co.uk have to be for uk only?

I've not tried that form. I've got no idea of a value to bid with though?

 

[nnh]

why does a .co.uk have to be for uk only?

Well it doesn't! The sun newspaper isn't for the UK only but you don't see many Americans reading it in New York!

If you use a .uk as your main domain you may find it harder to make it appear in some search engine results outside of the UK. It will do well in google.co.uk but less so on google.com (there are other factors also!)...

Depends where you want your traffic from, if you are to sell any products and to where that end market is. A .uk will give you mostly a UK search market, this will be even more relevant in the future as search engines develop to manage search demands.

 

[jwm]

when it comes to seo it doesn't seem to matter these days what your prefix is.

I did a google search last week (can't remember what i was looking for), added +uk at the end of the search terms and hit return.

Result one was a .com.au and result 2 was a .za!

I am finding that happening a lot these days and quite a few of my friends are saying the same thing.

Seems to me that people have figured out how to beat google and as a result google is throwing up a lot of irrelevant matches.

 

[gazraa]

so if I swapped to the non hyphen .co.uk I would need to do a 301 redirect on the .com to just point to the same page on the .co.uk site..... I assume a simple .htaccess file will do the job?

Is it worth the hassle of swapping now the .com is indexed and generating traffic?