over year old domain with dashes

peacestone

peacestone

New member
Sep 10, 2009
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Amedica
So i bought a dashed domain name over a year ago. Had an idea to make an authority site in a niche that didn't have too much competition last year. So i threw a few pages of relevant Amazon ads and let it sit for over a year since I didn't have the time to build it. Now I am ready to build it but keep looking at a few things.

1. Are there any authority sites with a dash in the domain? The person who owns the .com without the dash is anonymous and hasn't done anything with it. Why would I build a super site and when people search my site w/o the dash give him an opportunity to bank off my work?

2. Since it sat for a year with 0 content just affiliate links how can I test to see if it has or has not been banned? The pages are indexed, but nowhere to be seen. I haven't optimized or promoted it yet so is it too early to tell if I got the google hammer?

The domain isn't searched in high volume. It is a category but my site is dedicated to all the associated sub categories or micro niches that get good search volume. When I bought the domain (over a year ago) there wasn't much competition. Within the past year about 10+ sites popped up with keyword domains for the micro niches, all with good 1st page rankings. I am still interested in building it more to test things and learn and enjoy competition. Im all ears to thoughts and suggestions.

:bigear:
 


peacestone said:
1. Are there any authority sites with a dash in the domain? The person who owns the .com without the dash is anonymous and hasn't done anything with it. Why would I build a super site and when people search my site w/o the dash give him an opportunity to bank off my work?
Click to expand...
Dashes do not affect rankings as content and backlinks do. If your site have great content and quality backlinks, it doesn't matter that your domain name includes dashes.

peacestone said:
2. Since it sat for a year with 0 content just affiliate links how can I test to see if it has or has not been banned? The pages are indexed, but nowhere to be seen. I haven't optimized or promoted it yet so is it too early to tell if I got the google hammer?
Click to expand...
If you didn't any blackhat things, everything should be okay. Post content, build few backlinks to it and watch your stats.
 
There are several authority sites with dashes in the niches I work in, that's certainly no barrier. A problem could arise if the non-dash owner starts developing his domain into something that is similar to yours, but you should have a good head start and from what you've said it sounds unlikely anyway.

If yours pages are indexed then there they aren't banned, they don't rank because they're probably lacking content and backlinks.

Get building.
 
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